Messages

176

General Software Discussion / Re: keeping/saving cloned files

« on: October 21, 2007, 01:06 AM »

I do like hardlinks, IF they work. I reorganize my files and folders quite often, so softlinks/junctions break all the time. Unfortunately, hardlinks on NTFS just don't work as reliably as expected.

To be fair, I work mostly with text files on Linux, so I'm not sure if files created by Open Office, e.g., have the same problem as MS Office files on Windows.

177

General Software Discussion / Re: keeping/saving cloned files

« on: October 20, 2007, 06:46 AM »

I've used junction points in XP for years, as well as softlinks in Vista. Both work well here, never having trouble deleting folders.

178

General Software Discussion / Re: keeping/saving cloned files

« on: October 20, 2007, 01:01 AM »

Same experience here. I believe it has something to do with how an application modify a file. Word, e.g., create a temp file and rename it to the original after renaming the original to a wbk, hence breaking the hardlink.

179

General Software Discussion / Re: kmplayer, whoa!!!

« on: October 07, 2007, 07:40 AM »

Has the charge against KMPlayer about GPL violation been cleared?

180

General Software Discussion / Re: XP or Vista user — take the poll!

« on: October 07, 2007, 07:26 AM »

Defragmenting individual files or just groups of files rather than whole discs. That is moving a single file or group of files on your hard disc so that the data is stored in a single contiguous block.

-Carol Haynes (October 04, 2007, 04:48 PM)

Got it. Thanks. I knew that, but I misunderstood your statement about "TrueImage will still produce reasonable incremental or differential backups" after file defrag. operation. I thought you suggested there's a kind of file defrag. that wouldn't move sectors (of a file) around, and I wondered how that's possible. Thanks for clearing it up for me.

181

General Software Discussion / Re: XP or Vista user — take the poll!

« on: October 04, 2007, 04:08 PM »

It's not quite true - if you defrag at the files level then lots of files don't change from one defrag to the next (and neither does their position on the partition) consequently TrueImage will still produce reasonable incremental or differential backups. It is only when you use defragmenters that reorganise your whole hard disc that you cause imaging software problems because the new backups will be the same size as the base backup.

-Carol Haynes (September 17, 2007, 03:40 PM)

Sorry, I wasn't following this thread and saw this just now. I'm not sure I understand here. What's defrag'ing at the files level?

182

General Software Discussion / Re: Acronis charging customers for bug fixes

« on: October 03, 2007, 02:20 PM »

Not sure I follow you, Polynom. I'm not asking for anything ideal, just something decent. On support, Acronis is in the bottom tier among those I've seen. Yes, they're polite; I said as much myself. But frankly I have seen few, if any, impolite tech support. Politeness means very little if you don't answer questions. Contacting Acronis tech support reminds me of some customer support phone calls when I was in the U.S.--your call is very important to us, blah, blah, blah... Very polite alright, but never got you anywhere.

Feature wise, it does look impressive. I wanted something Vista compatible that could do both disk imaging and file backup, and ATI 10 seemed to fit the bill. But now it's doing neither for me. I left EMC (Dantz) Retrospect for reasons, but I have to say Acronis is worse on both feature and support.

I criticized software before, but never a software author or company. This is a first for me. Acronis just got me mad.

183

General Software Discussion / Re: Acronis charging customers for bug fixes

« on: October 01, 2007, 02:11 AM »

Another update:

As I said, they asked me to test True Image 11 after the test build of ver. 10 failed to fix the bugs. I had to download the trial ver. myself and then spend a couple of hours testing it against the bugs I reported. Turned out ver. 11 also failed on most of them. I reported back.

Then I got an email telling me "We are expecting fix in new build of Acronis True Image 11.0 Home. When it will be released you will be able to download and test it."

So they're basically saying they'll eventually fix it in ver. 11, and I'm free to pay for it. That's it! Not a word about what started all the exchanges -- I wanted ver. 10 fixed.

After more than a dozen email exchanges, I have to say I'm really unsatisfied with Acronis tech support. They're always polite alright, with boilerplate text that just keep repeating company sound bites, but they rarely listen to what you're asking. A typical example is the one that came after I complained to them about forcing ver. 10 customers to pay for ver. 11 to get bug fixes:

Thank you for using Acronis True Image 10.0 Home http://www.acronis.c.../products/trueimage/

Our upgrade policy is to provide free upgrade to customers who purchased the software within 30 days prior to the release of the new version of the product.

We are always at your service should you have any further questions.

Note that you can quickly find the answers to your questions in Acronis Support
Knowledge Base at http://www.acronis.c...omputing/support/kb/

Thank you.

Even though I'd already told them I'd bought ver. 10 two months ago (hence not eligible for free upgrades). So I wrote back to reiterate what I thought was the gist of my original complaint: "I wasn't asking for a free upgrade, I was asking you to fix the outstanding bugs in ver. 10."

Then came the following message:

Thank you for taking time to contact us.

If you have any questions concerning our software, please feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience with the details and we will do our best to help you as soon as possible.

Note that you can quickly find the answers to your questions in Acronis Support
Knowledge Base at http://www.acronis.c...omputing/support/kb/

Thank you.

If you have any prior contact with Acronis tech support, you should recognize these lines as their standard template. The previous message quoted above contained similar lines as well. I don't mind. But at least they should address my question/complaint in between these lines. The previous message at least attempted as much, however unsatisfactorily. This one, OTOH, just dumped me their template and that's it!

But for the fact that I don't have the time to reinstall my Windows from scratch, necessitating me to keep the images Acronis made for the time being, Acronis would be gone from my desktop by now.

Sorry for the long rant. Just couldn't help it.

184

General Software Discussion / Re: In need of "desktop icon folders"

« on: September 28, 2007, 05:57 PM »

I downloaded powerpro, and I will try it out when I re-install windows today or tomorrow, it sounds like it may do something like I want.

-nite_monkey (September 28, 2007, 07:10 AM)

In that case, you might want to sign up for the Powerpro user group on Yahoo, which is pretty active, with a lot of very experienced users who also provide some very good plugins.

http://www.pcrei.com...pro/files/index.html also provides some good information. Powerpro's help is very thorough, too.

BTW, do you use Vista? There're some minor issues if you do.

185

General Software Discussion / Re: Acronis charging customers for bug fixes

« on: September 28, 2007, 05:21 PM »

Update:

After the new build (of TI 10) failed to address the bugs I reported, Acronis tech support asked me to test ver. 11 trial (downloaded from the web site). The result: most of the issues remained. So ver. 11 isn't exactly Vista ready after all.

186

General Software Discussion / Re: In need of "desktop icon folders"

« on: September 27, 2007, 10:05 PM »

Powerpro does this, and it's freeware. It's a multi-purpose utility, and very powerful at that, so its learning curve could be a little steeper than more focused tools.

187

General Software Discussion / Re: Wrong language displayed for some dialogues and other features in XP Pro

« on: September 27, 2007, 05:20 AM »

This thread reminded me enough of an old itch that I simply have to scratch it, and a new build of Acronis TI Home 10 afforded me the chance (excuse) to restore my system back to an earlier stage and reinstall the nVidia driver (from Windows Update) several times, each time using a different language setting. The finding:

If I synchronize all three language related settings (Date-Num etc. format, location, system locale a.k.a default language for non-Unicode programs), then the nVidia item on the desktop context menu (the one that shows question marks on the screenshot I posted last time) would be normal, displaying "NVIDIA Control Panel" when in English (U.S.) mode, and "NVIDIA 控制面板" when in Chinese (Taiwan) mode.

If they aren't in sync, then I might get "NVIDIA ????" instead. Now, the strange part: say I have the three settings like the following--

Date-Num etc. format: English
Location: Taiwan
System Locale: Chinese (Taiwan)

and the "NVIDIA ????" context menu entry. I can get it back to normal the moment I Change the Date-Num etc. format to Chinese (Taiwan). No reboot is required. If I change it back immediately, the normal (Chinese) context menu entry stays. If I then reboot the system, however, I get the "NVIDIA ????" thing again.

I guess I can live with it now. What I really like, however, is for software (and web sites) to let me choose the UI language instead of trying to be too smart. Though I need East Asian language support, I'm using an English version of Windows exactly because I prefer English UI. If you understand Chinese, you'll know "NVIDIA 控制面板" is an awkward term. It's like babelfish translation--understandable (sometimes) but not pretty. For things I need to see every day, I prefer something prettier.

I'm not a professional coder. I write mostly scripts, especially VBA scripts. I once worked on a computer with Chinese Windows and Chinese Office, and I simply couldn't get any work done with my VBA scripts, for the VBA references were too cryptic to be understandable. 

188

General Software Discussion / Re: Acronis charging customers for bug fixes

« on: September 27, 2007, 04:45 AM »

Although I've never had problems, I think that Zaine too went through serious annoyances... He started to recommend BootIt NG instead -- if I remember correctly...

-Armando (September 26, 2007, 05:31 PM)

I've used BootIt NG (BING) for years. It's a great tool. Only shortcomings: can't do imaging in Windows and no incremental backup. But it's always been perfectly reliable, and it's also (I should say it's mainly) a multi-boot manager.

I ran into troubles when going Vista (whether that's wise is another story), however, and desperately needed a workable replacement for I'm in the habit of taking snapshots of the system partition every few steps when setting up a new system.

I did a quick research (too quick, in hindsight, for I didn't dig deep enough on the wildsecurity forum) and heard many good praise of Acronis TI. I downloaded the trial version but soon learned one of the its main functions I needed (can't remember which one, probably something related to operations from the rescue media) was only available to registered users, so I registered.

It's a mistake.

Turned out the problem I had with BING was related to Vista's new partition and disc signature rules (see http://www.multibooters.co.uk/ for detail). What BING can't do, TI can't either.

Besides, TI has other Vista related issues, as said in my original post.

After I registered an official complaint on their tactics (forcing customers to upgrade for bug fixes), they offered me to try a beta version of TI Home 10 (not offered on the website yet). The new build is better, but most of the above issues remain. I've just reported my findings back to them. We'll see how it goes.

This raises serious doubt, however, on whether they've really solved the major Vista compatibility issues with the brand new ver. 11. They claimed ver. 10 to be Vista ready; it wasn't. Now they're saying the same thing about ver. 11, but I really doubt it.

189

General Software Discussion / Re: Shareware that don't have freeware replacements

« on: September 27, 2007, 03:55 AM »

I've never tried other Tray management utility mentioned here, so I can't really compare or comment. It's because I've used Powerpro for too many years (back when it's shareware called stiletto), which does this and many more. Powerpro has a relatively steep learning curve, but its power and flexibility is amazing. But for the fact that it doesn't support Unicode natively (there's a plugin but limited), I have no complaints.

190

General Software Discussion / Re: Wrong language displayed for some dialogues and other features in XP Pro

« on: September 25, 2007, 11:58 AM »

Darwin, thanks for the quick tutorial.

191

General Software Discussion / Re: Wrong language displayed for some dialogues and other features in XP Pro

« on: September 25, 2007, 12:23 AM »

I'm getting used to it, too, as long as I can still understand what it says. What really drive me nuts are context menus and dialogs like this (notice the question marks?):

Edit: sorry, I don't know how to get the picture to zoom in and out as you guys do. I thought it's automatic (by the system), but apparently not. I'll dig around the site to learn how.

192

General Software Discussion / Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...

« on: September 24, 2007, 08:09 AM »

Hi, Nosh,

Sorry I misunderstood you. If you're looking for a way to reorganize Windows context menus with ease, then no, I don't think you can do it with DOpus, to the best of my knowledge (I'm relatively new to DOpus, too, having used it for two months only).

DOpus does let you hide the system context menus on an all-or-none basis. Then you can add the items you want and others to the DOpus context menu system, using the method I mentioned earlier. And yet it's a cumbersome process if you really want to recreate the whole context menu system this way (check out the ContextMenu raw command in the help file if you really want to do it). I believe there should be other tools better suited for your purpose.

DOpus honors system context menus (unless you opt to hide them), meaning the context menu you see in DOpus should be a combination of the system context menu (for the selected items) and the DOpus custom context menu. Therefore if you use a 3rd party tool to reorganize system context menus (by really changing the registry settings), then those changes should be reflected in DOpus, in theory. I've no idea why the 3rd party tool you used to customize context menus doesn't work with DOpus.

I used to use a tool called contextmenu editor (or something like that) before Vista. Now I have a relatively new system with not too many applications installed, hence relatively short and manageable context menu, so I haven't started hunting for such tools yet.

193

General Software Discussion / Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...

« on: September 24, 2007, 04:33 AM »

Here's a question for DOpus users - is there any way to manage/customize the right-click context menu within DO? - to, for instance, put items like cut/copy/paste into an 'Edit' submenu?

-nosh (September 24, 2007, 03:25 AM)

Yes. Go to [Settings] [File Types ...] [All Files and Folders] (assuming you want it on all files and folders) [Context Menu], and go from there.

194

General Software Discussion / Re: Wrong language displayed for some dialogues and other features in XP Pro

« on: September 23, 2007, 11:53 AM »

Hi, Mike:

I've been using English Windows with East Asian language support for years (from NT to Vista). I've run into this a few times. Usually it happens after installing/updating software or device drivers (or their associate utilities), which install those East Asian version of dialogs/controls. IIRC it always happens when either the format localization setting (which controls the display of date/time, etc.) or the default system locale (for non-Unicode programs) is set to an East Asian language. In my case, it would be Chinese (Taiwan). Since you say you've never change those two settings to anything other than English, however, then you may have run into something I've never seen before.

To avoid this, I always change those two settings to Chinese at the very last step when setting up a new system, after I've installed all the software and drivers I need. And yet the problem is inevitable since new programs and updates have to be installed. For known programs that have this problem, I switch those two settings to English before installing them. Still, it's just a matter of time before I forget, or try new software. Sometimes I just live with it, otherwise I uninstall the new stuff and reinstall it after switching locale.

The nastiest ones come with Windows Updates -- e.g., nVidia drivers. If I change the locale settings to English before updating nVidia drivers, but then after I switch back to Chinese, some nVidia dialogs would show a series of question marks. No solution till this day.

195

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Direct Access - text expander and application launcher (and much more)

« on: September 23, 2007, 09:21 AM »

Just to add my experience with the developer.

I was intrigued after reading Darwin's review, and decided to try it out two days ago, when I saw the one day only 40% off discount special.

While it seemed nice, I ran into a bug with its autotext feature as soon as I tried it on unicode text. I reported the bug to the author, and he contacted me immediately. After a few exchanges he emailed me a beta that fixed the problem. The whole process took only a little more than a day.

Despite missing the deadline for the 40% off discount (I took advantage of the 30% off DC discount instead), I'm now a happy customer.

196

General Software Discussion / Re: Acronis True Image OR maybe not ???

« on: September 23, 2007, 06:32 AM »

The newest version of Acronis True Image (v11) has the ability to let you exclude certain files and folders from the full drive imaging.

-mouser (September 22, 2007, 04:23 PM)

This was already there with  True Image 10, which I'm currently using. I have very bad experience with them, however. See here if you care.

Edit: Serious bugs with ver. 10 include one that requires one to repair after restoring an image under Vista. It's well documented, and its cause was found. It's because TI 10 couldn't handle Vista's new partitioning rules well. Dig a little on their official support forum and you'll see. If those considering ver. 11, you might want to check if this has been fixed first. (Note: only partitions newly formatted by Vista are affected.)

197

General Software Discussion / Acronis charging customers for bug fixes

« on: September 19, 2007, 10:14 PM »

I bought Acronis TrueImage Home 10 two months ago to go with my new Vista machine, and run into several bugs immediately. Soon I found their official support forum and realized some of the bugs were there long ago. I filed two additional bug reports and assisted in locating the source of one of them. I even found and reported (to the company and on the forum) a workaround for it. They thanked me and said they'll be fixed.

From time to time I checked their web site for updates, but one never came. The latest build stays at 4942, released in March. Then today there's finally a new version -- TrueImage Home 11 and it costs $30 for upgrade! (Some on the forum said people who bought version 10 less than 30 days will be offered a free upgrade via email, but some who did said it's not true. Doesn't matter here since I don't qualify anyway.)

Come to think of it, we aren't even sure if those nasty bugs were fixed. They tout new features but say nothing about bugs fixed. (Have to admit I didn't look hard since I was so upset.)

Just to vent my frustration with Acronis, a company well praised here, on Wikipedia, and almost everywhere I know. 

198

General Software Discussion / Re: Experiences with TrueCrypt and disk encryption in general?

« on: August 12, 2007, 10:10 AM »

I've been using Truecrypt for several years. It's fast, reliable and transparent. I've never lost my notebook or HD, so I can't attest to its strength against hacking/cracking. Being open source, however, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

199

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is The Bat! e-mail app better than Mozilla Thunderbird (or other e-mail

« on: August 12, 2007, 06:48 AM »

I used TheBat! for a few years before giving up. I was a student back then. With a monthly allowance of $300 or so for two -- me and my wife -- I had to like it enough to pay for it, and I did. I was a frequent participants on TBUDL & TBBETA, answering questions and testing out betas, and made a few good friends there. I still miss it, so much so that I've kept TBBeta mailing list's web archive portal on my bookmark so I can check out new developments from time to time.

So, what drove me away? In short, the lack of Unicode support--not just being able to read/write UTF-8 messages, but full Unicode support (in text editor, in search function, in filtering function, in folder names, in message list view, etc.). They had been working on it for a while, and I kept pushing off the decision to jump ship. I was studying in the U.S., with relatively few Chinese and Japanese messages to deal with. When I graduated and came back to Taiwan, however, I couldn't wait any longer and was forced to switch to Becky, before Thunderbird emerged.

Nowadays I switch between Thunderbird, Becky and ZOË. ZOË is my main mail reader, organizer, and search engine, while I write mostly in Thunderbird. (I have an IMAP server, so I could change emailer more easily since the mail database is on the server. That's one of the main reasons why I build myself a Linux server.)

It's been five years since I last used TheBat, but AFAIK full unicode support remains a work in progress. IMAP support was spotty back then; not sure how it is now. Feature-wise, I still miss some of the things I could do with TheBat, but I have to say Thunderbird is very good already, and there are things Thunderbird or Becky do better the TheBat.

200

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Guy Tries Ubuntu

« on: August 11, 2007, 10:10 PM »

I've been using Linux for 3+years. Tried Redhat, Mandrake, Xandora and Ubuntuu before settling on Fedora. My server now runs Fedora 6.

I still use Windows for my desktop. My Linux server box doesn't even have its own monitor; I manage it from Windows. But it's not because Linux GUI (X-Win, KDE or GNOME) is bad. Before the fancy ones on the newest breed of Linux distros--including Ubuntuu 7--the GUI was quite adequate for me. The learning curve varies from user to user and from distro to distro (Ubuntuu is harder for me personally because I started out on Redhat), but it's not that difficult.

What really has me leashed to Windows is software, the applications and utilities I rely on for my daily work and life. Setting up a Linux box during the weekend is one thing, trying to master another office suite enough to do the daily work as efficiently as I'm doing with MS Office is another, but still doable. Having to learn a new scripting language well enough to convert all my handmade tools (VBA scripts) so I can accomplish the jobs no office suite (either MS or others) would do for me, however, has made it impossible so far. Give me a free summer then maybe I can do it, otherwise I'm trapped.