Messages

876

General Software Discussion / Re: Movie Collector 5 released

« on: May 30, 2007, 11:55 AM »

Good news, everyone...

MoC 5.1 has now been released (well, actually it's 5.1.1) with multi-disc and improved box set support!

What's new...

Multi-Disc support:
- Use the new Episodes & Features tab page to create Disc items for each disc in a multi-disc DVD set
- Enter Episode lists per disc
- Enter Standard Features and Extra Features per disc
- Improved carousel support: now enter Storage Device and Slot per disc
- Automatic Episode numbering
- Improved View, Export and Print template to show episodes, features and storage data per disc
Enhanced Box Set support:
- Box Set item now has extra fields for Front cover, Back Cover, Release Date, Barcode, Purchase Date, Price, Store, Condition, Current Value and Notes
- All Box Set fields are now shown in a special Box Set bar at the top of the Details View (in both Movie Collector 5 and Classic templates)
- new Box Set List button on toolbar for direct access to the Box Set List screen
- new Movie fields on Edition tab page: Distributor and Extras

-Collectorz.com

* TucknDar is a much happier customer now

877

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR V2 hyper-alpha - alias fiends available to test?

« on: May 30, 2007, 10:58 AM »

I don't use aliases enough to test and frankly I haven't the time either, but it definitely sounds like a good idea to split 'official' aliases and custom aliases and keeping them in xml!

I'll wait for the official release, though

878

Older Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for May 24th, 2007 - Codename "Summer is not for Sleeping"

« on: May 29, 2007, 09:39 AM »

Anyone have any requests for how we can make the newsletter better or more interesting?

-mouser (May 24, 2007, 04:43 PM)

Like someone's already posted, an editorial of some sorts would be nice. I have to admit I usually just skim through the newsletter, and see if there's an interesting thread or cool piece of software I've missed from the previous weeks. An editorial or something similar would make sure I'd spend more time reading the newsletter.

879

General Software Discussion / Re: Irfanview4 released

« on: May 27, 2007, 04:17 PM »

As for the thumbnails, I don't think I've ever used that in Irfanview, I use Total Commander for that. I can understand that opening a new window for it could be annoying though.

-TucknDar (May 10, 2007, 02:15 AM)

thumbnails.. they are necessary so you dont have to go back to file manager ..right? even though (i dunno about totalCommander) but i can dinamically resize thumbnails as well as perform  small modifications on images in dopus, like resize, rotate and change format(bmp,jpg,png,gif) wich saves a lot of time..

-legion1978 (May 10, 2007, 02:36 PM)

Yes, I can do that in Total Commander (even through Irfanview commandline switches if I wanted to).
I don't see the problem with going back to filemanager from image viewer. I think TC and Irfanview work very well together. Both are the fastest I've tried in their specific fields. But I suppose favoured software all depends on needs and wants It's usually like that.

880

Living Room / Re: 100 days of Vista: Is it Windows ME all over again?

« on: May 24, 2007, 08:00 AM »

Wuddyamean? ME was great!

Of course I'm kidding. My parents were running ME before and whenever I was home I had to fix a bunch of things... It was horrible. (Obviously some user-related problems, but they were often the result of a bad OS).

My personal favourite WinOS is 2K. In the 6 or so years I was running it I never had any problems that I remember. I've been running XP for 5 months or so, and it's taken quite some time to get everything running smoothly.

881

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

« on: May 23, 2007, 01:49 AM »

What's the upgrade policy of TheBat?

I might give it a try, and although I very much doubt I'll buy it, I'd like to know if I'd have to keep paying for it in the future...

Currently I use Opera's M2 client

882

Official Announcements / Re: Winners of May 2007 Giveaway Drawing

« on: May 16, 2007, 04:54 PM »

Congrats to the winners!!

Didn't enter this time month, but maybe there's something I want next month

And again: Kudos to cthorpe for getting these discounts and free licenses

883

General Software Discussion / Re: Faststone Image Capture now Shareware

« on: May 16, 2007, 02:09 PM »

I must admit I've never been a heavy user of any screenshot application. Usually I've just pressed PrtScr or Alt+PrtScr and been happy with that. But now that I've gotten into the habit of using Screenshot Captor, I couldn't possibly imagine any app being better at this than what mouser has produced

But out of curiosity I'd like to know what features Faststone or any other similar app has that makes some of you prefer it over SC?

884

General Software Discussion / Re: KatMouse Query

« on: May 15, 2007, 02:12 PM »

Sounds as if it is a fine program. I am not going to try it, because I like my 'click mouse wheel to auto-scroll' feature in Volumouse a lot. When you have finished trying this KatMouse you really should try out Volumose as well. It too has options for focus on various windows and programs.

-Curt (May 15, 2007, 11:48 AM)

Really? Then it has a poor readme, 'cause I couldn't find anything about that in it.

I read it again, before posting this, and there isn't any indication that it controls "focus on various windows and programs." Maybe it's just one of those good bugs 

885

General Software Discussion / Re: DVD playback software

« on: May 13, 2007, 09:42 AM »

Don't know what you're doing wrong, but I have no problems navigating the menus in Media Player Classic with K-Lite mega codec pack... I just choose Open DVD from File menu, and that's about it. I don't think I did anything special when I installed the software either

886

General Software Discussion / Re: DVD playback software

« on: May 13, 2007, 09:07 AM »

I use K-Lite Mega Codec Pack with the excellent Media Player Classic. (Freeware) Works for me

See http://www.free-code..._Mega_Codec_Pack.htm

The K-Lite Codec packs come in a couple of versions, Lite, full, mega, or something like that. Depends on what you need. I just use the mega pack to be sure I can watch anything... I probably don't need half of the codecs, but...

887

General Software Discussion / Re: Movie Collector 5 released

« on: May 12, 2007, 02:03 PM »

Well, I'll be...

I've been fairly critical of Collectorz.com and their unresponsiveness to feature requests and all, but it does seem like either I've caught them on bad days or they've changed.

One of the major disappointments I had with version 5 of Movie Collector was the lack of multi-disc support, and the response I got when complaining about it was this:

here's an explanation of why we didn't (and probably never will) add [multi-disc]
(...)

-Alwin Hoogerdijk (Wed May 02, 2007 8:49 am)

Guess it'll never happen, but...

... I still did some arguing and I also created some mock screenshots with explanations (obviously with the aid of Screenshot Captor (and GIMP) ) on how I pictured this feature, and lo and behold:

Mmm, that is a great idea.
(...)
Anway, I have just discussed this multi-disc stuff with Mark-Jan and Bernard and I am happy to tell you that we have decided to go for it.
So version 5.1 will finally have multi-disc support, at least the basics of it (episodes, features and storage data per disc). Then we may expand on it later based on user feedback.

-Alwin Hoogerdijk (Thu May 10, 2007 11:30 am)

They've also decided to improve their box set support, based on several users' feedback (obviously including my complaints ).


So in the end, while I still think Collectorz.com didn't handle the new upgrade scheme all too well, at least they've actually impressed with me with the way they've handled these requests, ideas and complaints about some much wanted features I think I've actually regained my trust and respect of the company.

It still remains to be seen how well they'll implement this, but just doing it is a giant leap IMO.

888

General Software Discussion / Re: Irfanview4 released

« on: May 10, 2007, 02:15 AM »

Also a while ago I did an independent, completely not-scientific test between IfranView and XnView and XnView opened noticeably quicker

-Hirudin (May 10, 2007, 02:10 AM)

Really? Odd, I've had the exact opposite experience. Irfanview has just been faster for me, and that's probably the most important part for me in an image viewer, that it opens instantly. As for the thumbnails, I don't think I've ever used that in Irfanview, I use Total Commander for that. I can understand that opening a new window for it could be annoying though.

889

General Software Discussion / Re: Irfanview4 released

« on: May 09, 2007, 04:53 PM »

I could've liked FastStone if it wasn't for the hideous UI. Worst skinnable app I've seen, and when I tried it (a few months ago) I couldn't even disable skinning, only use a pseudo-default windows skin. Many things about it are great, but my eyes would hurt too much

890

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Replacement for Windows 'Open With...' dialogue

« on: May 09, 2007, 03:44 PM »

There's a couple of tools made for file manager Total Commander made for this purpose:

ChoiceEditor: http://www.totalcmd....eEditor_patched.html

Open File Shell for TC: http://www.totalcmd....ring/OpenFileTC.html

I haven't tried them from outside Total Commander, but I'm pretty sure they'd work the way you want them to.

891

Clipboard Help+Spell / Edit BBCode

« on: May 09, 2007, 07:11 AM »

I'm getting used to CHS, and it's become my default clipboard extender

I've already posted some feature requests earlier, but I had an idea for an extension/plugin/feature: BBCode editing!
Sometimes I need to write lengthy forum posts in more than one session, and while I can edit the post in CHS currently, it would be great with some simple BBCode support (+preview?), such as buttons for quotes, font size, bold/italic/underline etc. There is an AHK script for this, but doing it in CHS would be perfect

892

General Software Discussion / Re: PIM's

« on: May 09, 2007, 05:18 AM »

Anothe free one is Nomad (Open Source). I haven't tried it, but that is partly since it's in Java, and I've yet to use a program written in Java that feels right. There's just something ... wrong with Java-apps.

893

General Software Discussion / Re: PIM's

« on: May 09, 2007, 05:16 AM »

I was on a PIM-hunt for ages, and ended up with EssentialPIM (Portable). There is a free version, but I use the Pro (paid) version, as it has some features I really wanted that weren't in EPIM free (hierarchical to-do, among others).

Before I ended up paying for EPIM I tried several free ones. VORG Express looks impressive, but it felt really clunky and heavy.

One that I liked, but was a bit too basic and didn't have to-do lists, and an interface that left something to be desired, is Chaos Manager 2.

894

Official Announcements / Re: cthorpe has agreed to be Discount Coordinator: thank you!

« on: May 06, 2007, 07:55 AM »

ah, cool. Thanks for enlightening me, Ampa!

btw, since there's been some talk about how to spend our DC Credits, I suppose this is another worthy cause

895

Official Announcements / Re: cthorpe has agreed to be Discount Coordinator: thank you!

« on: May 06, 2007, 01:48 AM »

Well done Carl for taking on the job - we DCers appreciate it.

-Ampa (May 05, 2007, 08:40 AM)

Yes, we do!

Out of curiosity, how do you usually go about getting discounts? Do you follow some official DC guidelines of some sort?

896

Living Room / Re: Today I was searching for interesting software...

« on: May 04, 2007, 08:07 AM »

Porn? Never heard of it.

897

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Mouse wheel enhancement for Windows

« on: May 03, 2007, 12:23 AM »

I can only second what lanux128 said. This tool has been essential for me for years. It's so frustrating working with other computers without KatMouse

898

General Software Discussion / Re: Movie Collector 5 released

« on: May 02, 2007, 01:38 PM »

Aaaaaaahhhhh, that felt freakin' great!!   

899

General Software Discussion / Re: Movie Collector 5 released

« on: May 02, 2007, 01:37 PM »

Got a free license now - so happy ending.      ..... Until next time????

-Carol Haynes (May 02, 2007, 05:07 AM)

I'm happy to hear you got your license, Carol! However I think their business model stinks. Why should they give out "free" licenses to everyone e-mailing them if they've got a new pay-per-upgrade scheme? I think it's because they know how this will p*ss customers off, and they'll just please anyone who actually makes an effort to get what they paid for in the first place. How about the thousands of existing users that never visit their forum and only uses the built in update feature and pays the upgrade fee without asking questions? Collectorz.com will make a fortune on these customers.

I've also written some quite lengthy posts in their forum arguing that their software lacks an important feature (this is IMO of course, but I cannot fathom why multi-disc support is being left out ) and that the big jump in version number (4.11 IIRC -> 5) isn't justified because one of the socalled major new features is limited to the brink of being a joke. They claim to support Box Sets now, but this is basically just a folder that links to the movies in the box set. No info on the box set can be added, such as price, cover image, barcode, you name it.

As you can tell I'm pretty disappointed by this new version of the app, because I was expecting decent box set support and multi-disc support, but got neither... And the new upgrade scheme...... give me an effin' break

900

General Software Discussion / Movie Collector 5 released

« on: May 01, 2007, 05:02 PM »

A major update for Movie Collector is released - version 5!

What's New in Movie Collector 5:

Support for TV Series and Box Sets
Add links to movie files (DivX, Xvid, WMV, etc...)
Windows Media Center support (PRO edition only)
Add Movies Automatically (Improved Advanced Mode)
Edit Movie screen enhancements

While this is still my software of choice for my DVD collection, I'm a bit disappointed by this major upgrade. The long-awaited support for TV Series (Add episodes) and Box Sets is far too simple, IMO. And Collectorz.com still don't think there's any point in having multi-disk support, for some reason.

Collectorz have introduced a new upgrade scheme where you have to pay for the major upgrades:

Upgrading to v5
If you already own an earlier version of Movie Collector (Standard or Pro), you can upgrade to the PRO version 5 for only €13.95, a 50% discount. Just enter your license key in the box on the right and click Upgrade Now.
(if you came here from our upgrade notification email or from the v5 trial edition the key will be filled in automatically)

BUT apparently, if you registered BEFORE November 14th you own a lifetime free upgrade license, which they forget (I hope, but it seems a little too convenient) to tell you when you enter your license to pay for the upgrade. This means that I, and several others it seems, paid for the upgrade even though I registered last August. Collectorz where cool about it and gave me a full refund within minutes of my email, but as I indicated there seems there is no way of knowing about this when you're going to get that upgrade. I only hope this is a fault with their system and not an attempt to ripoff existing customers