Messages

101

ProcessTamer / Re: ideas for process tamer

« on: April 03, 2005, 01:47 PM »

That's right--it constantly sends a so-called 'idle' command while the processor is not actively working on something.  To answer your question, when the CPU eater program is running, CPUIdle and the CPU eater both show ~50% on the PT2 GUI.  So, as you can see, the default setting of 70% as the CPU usage high trigger wouldn't work.  I've set it to 30% to be safe.  There is definitely a way to do this--Samurize has a plugin that allows you to exclude processes from the count, and that way I can get a more accurate figure.  But, if you're planning on implementing your own CPU usage calculation method, you may be able to ignore those 'idle' commands that way.

Anyway, there is a workaround--simply setting the high trigger to about half what you would normally expect and creating an ignore rule for CPUIdle.  I just thought that it would be neat to have the ability to completely ignore process X.

102

ProcessTamer / Re: ideas for process tamer

« on: April 03, 2005, 12:38 PM »

mouser: I have a suggestion/feature request.  I use a program called CPUIdle to keep my processor's temperature down.  It has a side effect of making windows report 100% CPU usage all the time, even though it actually isn't that high.  This affects Process Tamer in that other applications are being reported at a lower percentage than they should be.  You mentioned in your ToDo list that you were planning to implement an alternate CPU usage calculation method.  Will that allow me to exclude CPUIdle from the CPU usage calculation?

103

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer 2 preview available to Members

« on: April 01, 2005, 02:33 AM »

Damn, you're quick, mouser.  The problem is indeed fixed.  I also noticed that changing options in the GUI didn't take place until after I'd restarted the tray program, but I thought that was normal at the time.

104

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer 2 preview available to Members

« on: April 01, 2005, 12:43 AM »

Sounds like that may have something to do with it.  You'll let us know when you've got a new version ready, right?   

105

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer 2 preview available to Members

« on: March 31, 2005, 06:12 PM »

Looks pretty good so far.  The only thing that doesn't seem right is the status of the tray app from within the config--it always says it's not running, even when it is.  That problem I was having with right-clicking the tray icon is gone, by the way. 

106

ProcessTamer / Re: Process Tamer won't work

« on: March 31, 2005, 12:54 PM »

It doesn't reduce the CPU usage of a process, it changes that priority of the process.  The way to test it is to bring up your task manager, right click the process in question, point to 'Set Priority' and see what is checked.  If it's on low, then Process Tamer is doing what it's supposed to be doing.  The objective of the program is not to reduce CPU usage, but to make it so windows won't become unresponsive while a program is using a great deal of processing power.  That said, it works fine on my Win2k machine.

107

ProcessTamer / Re: New (3/31/05) preview pictures of new ProcessTamer GUI

« on: March 31, 2005, 04:02 AM »

It keeps getting better and better.  Keep up the good work, mouser.

108

General Review Discussion / Re: About this section

« on: March 29, 2005, 12:02 PM »

Well, one thing to keep in mind is that this is your site.  We of the peanut gallery have plenty of opportunity to speak our minds on the subject afterwards.  I think we should have a review that you agree with, even if it wasn't necessarily your first choice.

Here's an idea: instead of just telling us right out which program you're leaning toward, why not list your top three? Then we could easily discuss those three and any additions without actually knowing what you're going to choose.  That would also give us the opportunity to affect your opinion before you make the decision.  I don't think voting is really necessary--popular opinion doesn't always dictate the best choice.  Instead, open the floor to logical discussion, but simply refrain from telling us which program you're leaning toward most.

109

ProcessTamer / Re: Preview picture of new ProcessTamer GUI

« on: March 29, 2005, 10:14 AM »

Wow.  That's a big leap forward from what we have now.  I'm looking forward to seeing it in action.

110

General Review Discussion / Re: About this section

« on: March 29, 2005, 10:10 AM »

If there are enough people contributing their opinions, that's a great idea.  It wouldn't work so well if it was one-sided, though.  I'll be the first to admit that I'm somewhat biased about my favorite programs...

111

General Review Discussion / Re: About this section

« on: March 29, 2005, 03:32 AM »

Well, I guess I'll put my 2 cents in.  I'll try to include a free option when possible.

Text Editor: SciTE (Scintilla Text Editor)
File Explorer: Xplorer² Pro
Email Client: Thunderbird
Clipboard Helper: CLCL
Archive Tool: WinRAR, 7zip as open source runner-up
Small Graphics Viewer: Irfanview, definitely
Screenshot Tool: FGWndGrab
Big Graphics Tool: The Gimp
Browser Addon: Adblock (Firefox)
FTP Client: SmartFTP
IRC Program: HydraIRC
Newsgroup Program: NewsLeecher
Peer-to-Peer Clients: Azureus
Calculator: Equalizer
Audio Player: Foobar2000
File Splitter/Joiner: HJSplit
Graphic File Converter: Irfanview
MP3 Tag Tool: Abander TagControl, Foobar2000 as open source runner-up

112

Living Room / Re: Everyone happy with PayPal?

« on: March 28, 2005, 08:03 PM »

I haven't had a problem with PayPal itself, just a time or two with people I was sending money to.

113

Living Room / Re: Should I increase avatar size? Poll.

« on: March 27, 2005, 12:28 PM »

Well, I'm used to the 105x150 avatars used in another forum, but the layout is much larger over there and can handle that size.  You couldn't go much bigger than what you have now without stretching the tables.  If you were going to go larger, I would suggest portrait-style dimensions, e.g. 65x130.  That'd work better for me anyway.

114

ProcessTamer / Re: ideas for process tamer

« on: March 27, 2005, 02:46 AM »

I've been using Netlimiter for quite some time now.  It does a great job of throttling bandwidth in either direction on a per-application basis.  What I would really like to see is that in addition to being able to prioritize one application over another--my FTP service over my BitTorrent client or vice versa, for example.  The program in the first link appears to offer that functionality.  I'll have to try it out, but either way, I don't know if it's really worth $35.

Edit: Nevermind.  I must have misunderstood the feature list.  Apparently all it does is throttle transfers based on source/destination IP and port.  No per-application feature, and apparently, no significant priority system either.  I'll stick with Netlimiter for now.

115

General Review Discussion / Re: What categories should we review next?

« on: March 26, 2005, 03:04 AM »

should be contentious award - i expect some real disagreements here.

-mouser (March 26, 2005, 02:00 AM)

I'll probably disagree with anyone who doesn't choose Xplorer² Pro on that. 

116

General Review Discussion / Re: What categories should we review next?

« on: March 24, 2005, 04:35 PM »

Here are a couple other things you could cover:

• BitTorrent Client
• Newsreader
• Archiver (e.g. WinZip, WinRAR, WinAce, etc.)

117

Living Room / Re: "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« on: March 24, 2005, 11:36 AM »

I'm cool with the 9 AM EST schedule you proposed.  I'm a night person as well, but it's no problem for me to write my column on Wednesday and schedule it to become available at 9 AM on Thursday morning.  I think the weekly model is a good idea--it really doesn't put any pressure on the columnists, and I think you have a good point about people looking forward to that week's column.

118

Living Room / Re: An idea for "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« on: March 24, 2005, 03:57 AM »

Hmm... music software, eh?  I could probably write a book about the various uses of foobar2000.  Also, I think I could come up with a few other things--pros and cons of various audio codecs and possibly some recommendations about some other pieces of related software.  Since you indicated short pieces weekly, I could break things up a little bit since I tend to be long-winded about, well, everything I guess.  Doing that would give me plenty of material.  Now that I think about it, this is a topic that I am fairly opinonated about, so coming up with something I'd like to discuss should be no problem at all.  I guess you could try me out for a couple of weeks and see how I do.  I'll go ahead and send you an email.

119

Living Room / Re: An idea for "Columnist Corner" - read in please

« on: March 23, 2005, 08:13 PM »

Are you looking for anything in particular for Thursday?  I imagine I could come up with something once a week, but it would help if I had a topic to go on.  The only thing I can think of that I'd be able to comment on that isn't already covered by someone more or equally qualified is music, but I'm open to suggestion.

120

Living Room / Re: What screensize do you have? Should we reduce size of left sidebar

« on: March 23, 2005, 07:58 PM »

I operate on 1280x1024.  My monitor can't go above that, but I think my vision would get worse if I used it.  Anyhow, the sidebar doesn't bother me, but if I was using 800x600 it might.

121

Living Room / Re: I was thinking of making a hardware section, opinions?

« on: March 23, 2005, 07:55 PM »

Agreed.  I don't think anyone will have a problem with using this forum for hardware discussion.

122

ProcessTamer / Re: ideas for process tamer

« on: March 20, 2005, 10:58 PM »

Is the balloon tip just an XP thing?  I'm not seeing it at all on 2k, but I know the program is working--I can see the changes it makes in my task manager in addition to the fact that my machine doesn't become sluggish while encoding videos, creating RAR archives, etc.  That could also be a GeoShell tray thing.  Being able to configure the threshholds would definitely be a good option.  And I like the idea of switching the icon when a process is being tamed, so to speak.

123

Living Room / Re: Long post about the new 50% Discounts (!)

« on: March 19, 2005, 09:20 PM »

Nice work.  I think you made the right choice as far as commissions go--that would make it seem like the reviews were biased.  I'm looking forward to getting the code for Outpost.  The firewall I've been using lately tends to act flaky every once in a while, forcing me to reinstall.  Which is a pain, because then I have to re-create all of my rules.  Outpost looks like it has a much nicer interface, as well.

124

Living Room / Re: I was thinking of making a hardware section, opinions?

« on: March 19, 2005, 09:13 PM »

It does seem outside the scope of the site, but I don't think it could hurt.  Maybe you could just make a subforum for hardware discussion?

125

Living Room / Re: A warm welcome to our new members from ShellCity.net and Infopackets!

« on: March 19, 2005, 09:12 PM »

Yep, ShellCity sent me here.  A good thing, too.