Messages

126

General Software Discussion / Re: post your 5 most used applications in 2007 here!

« on: December 31, 2007, 05:37 PM »

Some of the programs that I use the most not already listed are:

Total Uninstaller (what can I say, I like to try new software)
Where Is It? (cataloging software)
NoteZilla (sticky notes)
Check & Get (monitoring website changes)
SyncBackSE (copying/synchronizing files/directories)

Ken

127

Living Room / Re: Laptop hard drive... 5400 or 7200 ?

« on: December 29, 2007, 07:24 PM »

The price is less on MWave (all other things being equal).

Ken

128

Living Room / Re: Internet Faxing

« on: December 29, 2007, 04:45 PM »

I wanted to drop back in and say thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread. The input from everyone has been interesting, helpful, and informative.

Ken

129

Living Room / Re: Laptop hard drive... 5400 or 7200 ?

« on: December 29, 2007, 04:37 PM »

okay... But considering the price/size/performance ratio, seems to me like the samsung is -- or might be -- the deal.

What I'm actually interested in is to know whether the Seagate will REALLY be faster than the Samsung or if the difference will be negligible. (because if the difference is negligible I don't see any point and spending more money for a smaller drive that consumes a bit more energy -- albeit not much).

 in other words : yes I'd like a faster drive... but, according to the numbers, would the Seagate really be noticeably faster ?

-Armando (December 29, 2007, 01:39 PM)

I spent the better part of the day researching and thinking about related issues. I found one site that was very helpful: http://www.storagereview.com/. This site is all about hard drive performance and it was extremely helpful to me in making a decision.

One drive I considered very seiously was the 250 GB Western Digital Scorpio (WD2500BEVS) which is supposed to perform similar to a 7200 rpm drive despite the fact that it is a 5400 rpm drive. It is very quiet. You might take a look at that drive if you have not.

Regarding sound, there was only a 1.5 db difference between the loudest and quietest drive in the review I read for the particular drive I purchased. Given the fact that my laptop fan is always running AND that the drive will sit insite my laptop, I seriously doubt I would be able to distinguish that difference. Also, while the drive was the loudest, it was described as queit or very quiet by everyone who tried or reviewed it.

Ken

130

Living Room / Re: Laptop hard drive... 5400 or 7200 ?

« on: December 29, 2007, 05:51 AM »

I would love to get the 200 GB, 7200 RPM drive Hitachi Laptop Hard Drive, but how can I tell if it will work in my Gateway computer? Do I just get it, try, and return if not or is there some general way I can know or reference that can tell me?

Thanks, Ken

131

Older Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for December 24th - Codename "Here Comes Your NANY"

« on: December 25, 2007, 07:23 PM »

I'd love some feedback about whether you think this newsletter was too long, too "chatty", too "beggy", etc.

-mouser (December 25, 2007, 02:54 PM)

No! Actually, my purpose for coming here was to write to tell you what a nice newsletter I thought it was. Just for clarification, that was BEFORE I saw this request.

Ken

132

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Acronis True Image

« on: December 25, 2007, 07:19 PM »

http://tinyurl.com/yr83pt

I don't think I've ever seen it cheaper.

------------

-Cuffy (December 25, 2007, 03:50 PM)

Unfortunately, you need to be a subscriber to their newsletter to get the deal.

Ken

133

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder celebration ideas and requests to help

« on: December 25, 2007, 06:23 PM »

Mouser,

Many sites sell the stuff on their site on a CD, even when it is available on the site. It's a valuable resource. People can look at things when they are not online and it puts all the DC stuff in one place. Maybe consider that?

Ken

134

General Software Discussion / Re: How many of you use encryption?

« on: December 24, 2007, 11:43 AM »

I depend on it (and have for years) to keep all my patient information unavailable to anyone who gets access to my computer. I used PGP previously. Currently I use truecrypt.

Ken

135

Living Room / Re: Internet Faxing

« on: December 21, 2007, 03:07 PM »

one free webmail here (Germany - web.de) offers faxing but I've never used the faxing bits
so that's probably not much help
but
thought I'd post anyways and say happy christmas!!

-tomos (December 21, 2007, 03:03 PM)

Hi tomos. There is also FaxZero which puts an ad on at least the first page. I was hoping to find something better than that though, so I thought I would post and see what others came up with.

Thanks, Ken

136

Living Room / Internet Faxing

« on: December 21, 2007, 02:18 PM »

A very warm hello to everyone and happy holidays!!!

I send the occasional fax from my house and wondered whether anyone knows of any public services that do internet faxing so I could send the faxes from my computer over the WiFi instead of having to connect my laptop to a phone line.

Thanks, Ken

137

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite eBay/auction helping software?

« on: December 16, 2007, 11:55 AM »

How about just a list of the top few for starters?

-Deozaan (December 15, 2007, 11:16 AM)

OMG Deozaan! What an incredibly reasonable request.

Five that I thought the best or had particular strengths were:
Speed Bid
Bayside Sniper II
ESR - Auction Watcher
Auction Navigator
Auction Defender

Addendum
The last two that I thought were good or had particular strengths were:
Prospector
SpeedBid

Ken

138

General Software Discussion / Re: Blog steals Zaine's Great Software List

« on: December 15, 2007, 09:42 PM »

ALPHA TANGO ROMEO, TARGET HAS BEEN SPLASHED.  REPEAT, TARGET HAS BEEN SPLASHED.  REQUEST EXTRACTION PROCEDURE AND COORDINATES.

-Ralf Maximus (December 15, 2007, 08:43 PM)

VERY funny Ralf Maximus!!! I was thinking along similar lines, but my post would not have been nearly as good.

Ken

P.S. O, and I almost forgot, I am never saying anything bad about Zaine's page!

139

Living Room / Re: 100,000 users!

« on: December 15, 2007, 09:35 PM »

Incredible!!! Congratulations to everyone, especially Mouser and somehow it happened despite Josh! (jk)

Ken

140

General Software Discussion / Re: End-user problems with Artplus Software

« on: December 15, 2007, 07:08 PM »

Mouser (and others),

I think this section serves a very useful function and I've seen it make some important differences. So I would hate to see it go.

This particular thread makes me (and maybe just me) uncomfortable however because I see a number of statements made as being personal attacks, which is an inappropriate use and detracts from the section's value.

Ken

141

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite eBay/auction helping software?

« on: December 12, 2007, 12:20 PM »

member KenR made me try out about 100 dif ebay programs and he and i came to a basic agreement about the top few.  i keep nagging him to post his conclusions.  wake up ken!

-mouser (December 12, 2007, 08:10 AM)

             



What a retelling of events that was. A little more accurate and complete version of events was right before KenR went to the hospital, Mouser asked him to review the eBay software and stated that he only wanted KenR to tell him about the very best software.  Of course, as you can all well imagine, when I was telling him about the programs with particular strengths that I thought he might want to see, I had to wait through all the inevitable mousering. After I had essentially finished reviewing all the eBay clients prior to hospitalization and again after I was discharged from the hospital, Mouser asked me to jot down notes on the programs I had reviewed because he was going to write a review of the software.

Fortunately, since I knew what it would be like to try to write notes for those 100 software programs AFTER I had reviewed them I have consistently refused to get involved with this review.


So you enjoy putting this one together mouser. I'm staying asleep!


                           

142

Living Room / Re: Better run like Hell!!! I AM BACK!!!!

« on: December 12, 2007, 10:56 AM »

JoTo!!!! Welcome home friend. Glad you're out and feeling better. Now that you are home out of work, it's the perfect time to respond to emails and chat on IRC.

Seriously, I'm glad you are doing better. I've looked for you every day, asked about you often, and thought about you all the time. I look forward to speaking with you.

Ken

143

Living Room / Re: When I lay sick and dying ...

« on: December 02, 2007, 11:44 AM »

Thanks for posting these, ken!
Now i know how incompetent the posts are

I'm sorry to see that mine didn't get over there,but next time i shall choose some other way to send them.
I just hope i was the only one to whom this happened.

Still, you've got some pretty cool postcards there, ken!

-jgpaiva (December 02, 2007, 11:34 AM)

I'm sorry your's is not in the pack JG. That was my only concern about posting these and I'm sorry it happened to you. I'll go through things again and see if I missed any.

Ken

144

Living Room / When I lay sick and dying ...

« on: December 02, 2007, 11:27 AM »

Ok, that's admittedly an exaggeration, but during and after my hospitalization for back surgery, I was sent these cards by DC members. All the cards were wonderful, so I (Mouser) wanted to get them up for all to see. Thanks to all who sent them and a special thanks to JoTo who organized sending the cards.

Ken

PS. Mouser has been up my ass to get these posted for MONTHS!

145

General Software Discussion / Re: GoodSync free from RoboForm today (not)

« on: November 25, 2007, 04:19 PM »

Hey Carol and others,

I see this as a growing trend. It seems like every day, certainly every week, I see things presented with "free" something that turns out to be not free at all. Clearly the intent of these ads is to deceive the users. Hence, I see it as a pretty negative trend for the internet. The worst part of all of this is that more and more the good, big, respected companies are doing it as well as the scammers. I wonder what this says about the former!

Ken

146

General Software Discussion / Re: TouchPad (Mouse) registry settings problem - need help

« on: November 21, 2007, 06:42 PM »

Ok, here is what I have done so far:

1. monitor the applet to see where it is writing in the registry and modified those keys as appropriate. That is how I found out what got modified. When I modify these keys though, it doesn't change the mouse functioning. Any programs you would suggest for comparing. I was going to do that, made copies, but then I couldn't get my super reg editor to do it. I therefore used RegMon and went to the below step. Somewhere though, there seems to be a default setting with a different name or not in the registry so it is evading me so far.

2. uninstalled and reinstalled - to death, including downloading other versions of the synaptics driver as well as just using the winxp driver. It doesn't matter. The settings go back to some default and I have to reset them with the applet. What makes this more interesting is that it does this with the xp version as well as all synaptics versions. Regarding the point about how important is this, sensitivity in this case is SPEED. The mouse cursor moves extremely little from touchpad manipulations. So, I could reset these settings manually every time I boot, but it is critical that they are modified so the touchpad is functional.

3. used a startup monitor and disabled every program. Oh, just to be clear, whatever is changing the default also changes the registry values. Thus, every time I boot, the settings in the registry keys in the current user account are wrong again. I don't know if these registry settings are changed on shut down or start up.

None of the above manipulations have made ANY difference.

These are the boot values:


Here are the values after setting pointer speed to fast and checking the enhanced precision box:


Ken

147

General Software Discussion / TouchPad (Mouse) registry settings problem - need help

« on: November 21, 2007, 04:19 PM »

Hi Gang,

I know this isn't a tech support site, so sorry about the site abuse, but I thought someone might be able to help me with this.

Every time I boot my computer, I have to use the control panel applet and adjust the mouse settings. This sometimes, but pretty infrequently, occurs when I suspend. I have tried adjusting the registry, but apparently whatever in memory needs to update doesn't read it, so my manipulating the registry has had no effect. Does anyone know how to set the default touchpad (synaptics) settings so it boots to the correct values OR how I could write a program to change these in memory OR ...  I have tried updating my synaptics touchpad driver, but to no avail. For what it's worth, MouseSensitivity is the primary key that the applet changes that I have manipulated to no avail.

Ok, that's the problem. Who can tell me how to fix this??? Anyone who succeeds gets a virtual cookie of their choosing.

Thanks (if you even think about trying to help me),
Ken

148

General Software Discussion / Re: Handle Computer Lockups

« on: November 19, 2007, 11:07 AM »

Hi guys, im new to this site, i must say this looks to be a good place to be and make friends.

I love trying out and collecting softwares, so thought i should share one of the latest ive stumbled onto. Its called AntiFreeze. Its kind of an emergency task manager which is designed to be run when the cpu is abnormally busy. http://www.resplendence.com/antifreeze. Although i havn't got use for it since i installed it but I think it can be particularly useful, what do you think!

-manimatters (November 18, 2007, 09:10 AM)

Hi Manimatte!
Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!
It sounds like the site is the perfect place for you. Please let me suggest you try the Efnet channel (#DonationCoder). Lots of us hang out there from time to time and is a great way to interact with some of the site members.

Also, thank you for the software rec. I have actually been wanting one of these programs, but had not gone looking for one because I have about 40-50 programs that I have downloaded that I want to try.

Let us know if there is anything we can do to help you. It's typically the case that if someone has a particular need, others do as well.

Again, Welcome.
Ken

149

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: XYplorer File Manager

« on: November 10, 2007, 07:20 PM »

Hey Armando,

I use it (and Directory Opus) on a laptop with a touchpad and I have not had ANY problems of that nature.

Hope this helps and good luck with it,
Ken

150

General Software Discussion / Re: Searching for the best read-aloud software

« on: November 10, 2007, 09:47 AM »

Gee, this is interesting. I have TextAloud and was NOT that impressed with it. It is older. Perhaps the new versions are much better. I'll have to update my software and check out the difference.

Ken