Messages

176

General Software Discussion / The Bat!: two questions

« on: December 30, 2005, 07:17 AM »

Can anyone answer two Batty questions?

1) How do I get The Bat! to display sender's email addresses when I open received messages - attached screenshot show you what I get now...  I get this on one of my machines, but not on the other, and I just can't figure it out, though no doubt it's something extremely simple!
2) How can I get The Bat! to search through my address book and suggest names from it as I type in the To: box?  At the moment, I have to access the address book manually each time, and that is a bit of a drag.

Thanks!

177

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: A-book: a very good, sync-able, alternative addressbook

« on: December 28, 2005, 01:52 PM »

Hi Superboyac,

On a quick poke around, it doesn't seem possible to get completely customised field names, but you can choose from a large list of options - click on 'Tools', then 'Options', then click the 'Other' tab and click on 'Select Fields'.

I still use A-book and find it really good - especially with the added Pocket PC sync.  However, my mission to break free of Outlook has pretty much fallen apart...  I will start a thread on this sometime early in the new year, because my process might be useful/interesting to others...

178

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Addressbook software (simple, yet powerful)

« on: December 23, 2005, 03:06 PM »

Have a look at my mini-review of Abook over in the 'mini reviews by members' section - I think that can do everything you want...

179

Living Room / Re: Samorost - beautiful puzzles

« on: December 19, 2005, 11:05 AM »

That seems to work for each part individually, but when you get the end of a sequence it stops working (certainly that's my experience using SWF Opener).  Really I wish there were another way, because this feels a little like sneaking around, since they've not actually made them available for download.  Well, really I just wish they would agree to have their beautiful games available for download...

Thanks for the tip, though, and thanks for your posts on FDM and FlashGot - I've been using both for awhile, but had no idea they were so useful!

180

General Software Discussion / Re: For dictionary lovers

« on: December 17, 2005, 06:10 AM »

I just downloaded the Sage, and it really seems very good. 

I thought I remembered a post this week or last, with a link to another dictionary program, but I couldn't turn up anything with a search of the forums.  Is Sage what you're using now, Mouser?  I know you share my love of such programs, so I'm interested to know what you use. 

My Visual Thesaurus is brilliant, but sometimes I need more of a definition, and I would especially like to have etymology, since I often use this.  There is a very pretty Konfabulator (the transition to calling it 'Yahoo Widget Engine' will not be easy for me!) dictionary widget, which can search a number of online dictionaries - that will probably be my choice when I'm connected, but I need something for online use too.

181

Living Room / Re: Samorost - beautiful puzzles

« on: December 16, 2005, 05:06 PM »

I never really got into Myst - I wonder if I should go back to it?  My adventure gaming days were back when Infocom were making their classic text games...  I spent a generous portion of 1980-1985 on those!

182

Living Room / Re: Samorost - beautiful puzzles

« on: December 16, 2005, 04:40 AM »

No, Carol, that's happening for me too.  Started last night.

I finished chapter 2 last night, with a real sense of achievement and pleasure.  Delightful! 

I only wish they would allow downloading their other games - I like to work out the puzzles sitting downstairs with my laptop, and there's no internet connection there.  Also, there are a number of beautiful games mentioned in their forums, and likewise I wish I could download those...

183

Living Room / Re: Samorost - beautiful puzzles

« on: December 15, 2005, 03:41 AM »

Great!  Glad you liked it as much as I did, Mouser!  I'm really stuck on one of the puzzles now - I think it's in chapter 2, so unless you bought the full version, you can't get to it.  A lot to do with whale farts and a sleeping taximan...

184

Post New Requests Here / Re: auto website loginer

« on: December 14, 2005, 04:36 AM »

They also have a generous discount available for students and low-waged, which is easily accessible from the order page.  And once I used it for a few days, I came to rely on it entirely!  It's great - makes so many tasks so much easier.

185

Living Room / Re: Samorost - beautiful puzzles

« on: December 13, 2005, 02:31 PM »

Do look at their other inventions, too - there's a really lovely soulfulness and grace to everything they've done.  They seem to be the kind of people I would want as friends! 

186

General Software Discussion / Re: SpyDefense

« on: December 13, 2005, 02:06 PM »

SpyDefense seems good - a little heavy on resources, but it's certainly the most handsome of the various antispy programs (to my eye). 

(BTW, there's a good article in the current issue of Wired on the reinvention of Gator.)

187

Living Room / Samorost - beautiful puzzles

« on: December 13, 2005, 01:46 PM »

www.samorost2.com

Others may already know of these beautiful Flash-based puzzles - I found a link to the first one on Downloadsquad.com last week.  They are superb games, with haunting aethereal music, lovely imagery, and fun, unusual twists in the tale.  Highly, highly recommended - I just visited the new site, and was hooked enough to buy the full download, because I really want to support them in their lovely, evocative work.  Enjoy!

188

Living Room / Re: Your owned computer history/upgrade path

« on: December 12, 2005, 09:56 AM »

I'm 36 and have been playing around with computers since I was 10.

Commodore 64 > 386 > 486 > Pentium I > Pentium III > AMD Athlon XP-M > Pentium IV

Since the first Pentium, all have been laptops - except my current P4 is a Pavilion ZD7010, which means it's really more of a desktop than a laptop (17 inch screen, weighs a ton!).

Also had a Sharp Zaurus handheld, which is a Linux-based handheld PC, but I downgraded myself to a much smaller and less capable, but does-just-what-I-need-very-well HP iPaq 1945.

189

Living Room / Re: The Great Firewall Hunt ... frustrating ...

« on: December 08, 2005, 11:20 AM »

I have pretty much decided to dump Outpost and opt for Look 'n' Stop.  I am one of the people who suffers with a repetitive BSOD - oops, something's done something bad and we're going to have to stop everything right now, so just back away from the machine, buddy! and then it shuts down.  This is documented on their forums, and for awhile it worked for me run the firewall in background mode - this also solved an issue with Limewire connecting, though that was likely caused by an error on my part in transferring config instructions from the forum (and if it wasn't then is it safe to run in background mode?).   But the last few times I have restarted, Outpost has freaked out again and reported a crash and the need to call home...  Look 'n' Stop seems really good - it's very light (running at 6mb at the moment), and it's simple to configure.  At least I am having a holiday from Outpost - if at the end of the L'n'S trial I decide to return to OP, I think I might opt to return to 2.7.

190

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Acronis 40% Christmas Discount

« on: December 08, 2005, 05:52 AM »

You beat me to listing this 

Tell me, is this worthwhile?  The other deal is $100 off their Privacy Expert, Disk Director, and True Image in one - so that's $60 for the three programs (plus a support ticket worth $30).  I am broke as always (I earn too little money - anybody want to sponsor me while I finish my re-training?  I'm a pretty good and experienced writer...), but if this is as good a deal as it sounds, I can borrow some money... Any opinions?

191

Living Room / Re: Unpredictable Windows ... Can someone HELP !! (Slowly going mad)

« on: December 06, 2005, 09:41 AM »

Carol, Do take a clook at OptimizeXP (http://mywebpages.co...rtCD/OptimizeXP.html), which has good advice in general - and a link to Black Viper's page on Windows services, which is helpful in sorting out what services you really need to have running.

192

Finished Programs / Re: DONE - IDEA: Program Closer

« on: December 04, 2005, 02:32 PM »

I have used SmartClose, and I liked its appearance too, but I found it a little buggy - not everything it closed started smoothly afterwards, and I found a few things had disappeared from my autorun files.  I should say that this was quite a way back, and they might have fixed this kind of problem, but it certainly put me off.

193

Finished Programs / Re: Program closer

« on: December 04, 2005, 02:27 PM »

THAT is fantastic - thank you LuckMan!

194

General Software Discussion / Re: New Mozilla Firefox user

« on: December 03, 2005, 06:54 AM »

It is neat - a lot more demanding on system resources, so I wouldn't leave it running in the background as I did Hostsman, but it does give the user more control.  And their list of Hosts is pretty good too - on a brief overview, it avoids a few of the false positives that were in the files I had downloaded through Hostsman.  There's some good advice in that NOD page.

195

General Software Discussion / Re: New Mozilla Firefox user

« on: December 03, 2005, 06:42 AM »

I think it might actually be a problem with Hostsman on my machine... I found this quite useful page on a US NOD32 site - http://www.nod32usa....faqs/1125160244.html - and followed the links from there to their recommended Hosts manager (BISS Hosts Manager), and that works fine - allows me to edit and replace the Hosts file...  And so I am able to visit Betsy's page.

196

General Software Discussion / Re: New Mozilla Firefox user

« on: December 03, 2005, 05:40 AM »

For realtime protection I have NOD and - wait for it - Outpost Pro 3.  I'm just going to have a little poke around in Outpost's settings...  [time passes]  Well, I can't find anything obviously giving it control...  But then I don't know Outpost very well - does anyone know whether this might be it?

197

General Software Discussion / Re: New Mozilla Firefox user

« on: December 03, 2005, 04:47 AM »

This could be really helpful for me, so I'm glad you've responded, Carol - this has been driving me a little nutty for awhile.  Here's my experience: when I run Hostsman, it's always greyed-out, meaning that some other program has control of the Hosts file (I think that's how they put it in the Hostsman manual); so I open Process Explorer and search on 'hosts', and it tells me that three poscesses are connected to 'hosts': gss.exe (twice, for some reason), and hm.exe (which are Ghost and Hostsman, respectively).  Now you can't shut down GSS very easily, because it's running at such a low level.  I have tried to used Startup Delayer to delay GSS running, so that Hostsman could get priority on the Hosts file, but I expect there's a pretty fundamental flaw in my thinking...  But no, the file (at C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC) is not marked as read-only or hidden.  Would love to find a solution to this, because I quite often find innocuous sites blocked and want to be able to edit my Hosts when I need to.

198

General Software Discussion / Re: New Mozilla Firefox user

« on: December 02, 2005, 05:16 PM »

Yep, Freewebs.com is listed in my Hosts file, so no can visit.  This is one drawback of using Host files and multiple security programs - Ghost Security Suite controls my Hosts file, and I can't figure out how to wrest it back so that I can edit it.  Anybody have any ideas?  I posted a question on this topic over at Wilderssecurity.com a few days back, but nobody has answered yet...

199

General Software Discussion / Re: New Mozilla Firefox user

« on: December 02, 2005, 03:55 PM »

You're welcome, Betsy - glad my advice helped. 

(By the way, the link in your signature doesn't work...)

200

General Software Discussion / Re: top 10 freeware apps from "snakeoillabs"

« on: December 02, 2005, 11:29 AM »

Hey, Carol: Thanks for the heads up on FastStone - that's great!  At last I've found a replacement for Picasa, which crashes my machine (I think due to a way it uses memory, and the way my memory is set up).  I have used xnView for awhile now, but never really been very excited about it - but FastStone seems reaslly good.