Messages

276

General Software Discussion / Re: List with the best available software (freeware and shareware)

« on: August 07, 2007, 04:59 PM »

Thats a great resource - bookmarked! Thanks for the hard work.

277

General Software Discussion / Re: What is a good freeware Vista Firewall ?

« on: August 07, 2007, 04:57 PM »

IMHO a firewall is more trouble than its worth for most people. A much better investment is a router which are very cheap ($20 or even free with rebates). All of them come with NAT hardware firewalls that do a much better job of protection and more importantly, are setup free and cannot conflict with your OS or programs.

The only case in which I'd recommend a software firewall is if you need outbound protection/notification, e.g. if you want to find out when a program tries to connect to the internet and possibly block it.

278

General Software Discussion / Re: The great defrag shootout

« on: June 12, 2007, 01:59 PM »

I think the author went from 3.8 -> 3.9 -> 3.1. He should've gone to 4.0 but I guess he didn't think it was a big enough change for that!

279

General Software Discussion / Re: The great defrag shootout

« on: June 11, 2007, 09:18 PM »

That was an interesting read. I gave up on Diskeeper after its disappointing performance and overly complex UI and use PD, but I'm thinking I should just use JkDefrag and the the other freeware mentioned. Disk defragmentation is a game of diminishing returns anyway and there really is no point trying to squeeze that last bit of performance by running continuous defrag jobs. If anything it places additional stress on the hard disk.

280

General Software Discussion / Re: RAID explained ?!

« on: May 31, 2007, 07:33 PM »

The only situation in which I would ever use or recommend is RAID 5 with a hardware controller with parity calculation. Even then if your controller goes bad you have to get the exact same one because RAID arrays are not generally transferable. So software RAID might actually be preferable because its more fault tolerant, if cpu load is not an issue.

RAID was never meant for performance and I see custom pc builders using it for that all the time. ITs meant for data redundancy and IMO those needs are much better served with a judicious backup strategy, for which RAID is no substitute! I've seen many horror stories where people think RAID 1 is backup, then try to recover something they deleted on one drive

281

General Software Discussion / Re: google developer day reporting: google gears (better than AJAX?)

« on: May 31, 2007, 07:20 PM »

This is great news! I love google webapps but the one caveat is offline access and it looks like this will take care of it. I hope they roll it out soon and integrate with all of google's own apps.

282

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« on: May 20, 2007, 02:05 AM »

So how do these tools compare to Vista's builtin search? I'm using Vista Enterprise at work and I have to say the search integration in the Vista UI (explorer, start menu) really does make a difference as far as usability is concerned. I know its basically WDS 3, but I wish it was more of a system service. As it exists, you can never really tell what state the index is in and how much content is being indexed, so the search can be funky at times.

283

General Software Discussion / Re: Web Mail Recommendation?

« on: May 20, 2007, 01:59 AM »

If gmail was just a webmail like the others, it would still be hands down the best one, due to the simplicity of its interface, google's no nonsense approach ect. But thats not reallthe attraction of gmail. Why you want (at least why I) want to use it is -

- automatic conversation threading
- no folders, welcome to tags
- unbeatable search
- countless extensions and greasemonkey scripts to make it better
- integration with other google services like maps

284

General Software Discussion / Re: Autoplay Repair

« on: May 14, 2007, 09:03 PM »

Nice little app, thanks. Seems to work in Vista as well.

285

General Software Discussion / The Holy Trifecta - Indexing, Backup, Catalog

« on: May 14, 2007, 02:28 AM »

Like many users, I have terabytes of data across multiple computers and hard disks, and its becoming increasingly impossible to find stuff I need and manage it sensibly. I keep coming back to the idea that we need an integrated approach that combines these 3 areas -

- backup/filesync to backup my data. I much prefer synchronization software to just keep an exact copy on a separate disk, but the software needs to be able to track copies

- cataloging to know which media contains what

- indexing to help me find stuff quickly

Right now,  I have different apps for each of these which do not play well together. e.g. if I search for a file in my index app (Copernic/X1) I want it to tell me that its on my USB backup drive #2 and that its also backed up on my laptop. I do not want the index itself to contain 3 copies of the contents of the file. Similarly, the disc cataloging app should work with the index. Both should update seamlessly in realtime as and when different computers/disks come online, and the index/catalog itself should replicate itself. The backup program should let me select a folder to backup, then use the cataloger to track where its been backed up, and sync automatically. And of course, all of these programs should use UNC and USB device id's so they don't depend on disk numbers that can change, as well as do link tracking for moved files.

Now I know no such program exists (or does it?) so I'm looking for suggestions and workflow dieas on how best to do this.

286

General Software Discussion / Re: .Net Framework

« on: May 14, 2007, 12:59 AM »

The .NET framework is not installed as part of any OS or service pack before Vista, and is always an optional install in Windows Update. There are a few programs that depend on it, but not that many, and there are no runtime dependencies in Windows on .NET (even in Vista), which means it will not run unless you are running a program that depends on it, so it won't take up resources unless needed. In my experience it is faster than Java.

287

General Software Discussion / Re: To Vista or not to Vista that is the ?

« on: May 11, 2007, 01:18 AM »

The AnyDvd page says it will let you watch movies over a digital connection without HDCP, but it doesn't say what happens if you do have HDCP. I'm pretty sure having HDCP will enforce DRM since its built into the standard. I've never heard anything about Vista's media layer DRM being bypassed by Anydvd or similar programs, so I'm a little skeptical.

However, all the fuss over Vista DRM is a little over the top. Its all there, and you can easily verify by playing wmv content in Windows media player. You will see mfpmp.exe (Media Foundation Protected Pipeline) running in task manager and happily eating away all your cpu. Thats DRM in action. However, play the same file in any other player (vlc, mpc etc) and it plays without DRM.

Hardware DRM is going to be harder to bypass.

288

General Software Discussion / Re: Symbolic Links in Vista - Like a playlist, but for anything!

« on: May 10, 2007, 04:10 AM »

And once again, Windows Explorer does not expose all the neat features that the OS and NTFS is capable of. Symlinks are new, but I'm talking about hard links, junctions, reparse points and all the other cool stuff thats been in NTFS since the beginning. This is why we needed all the sysinternal and resource kit cmd line tools. If only the Windows GUI had bothered, imagine how much nicer the user experience and tools could have been.

289

Developer's Corner / Re: another good software blog site

« on: May 10, 2007, 04:05 AM »

Actually, Israeli's, Russians and developers from the eastern bloc are generally speaking, very good programmers and hackers (unfortunately, the term hacking has come to represent virus writers and script kiddies, whereas its supposed to mean someone brilliant who can figure out any technology and 'hack' their way into it).

If anything, I took that reference as a compliment.

290

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« on: May 10, 2007, 02:16 AM »

I completely agree that the needs of the pro and amateur are very different and software should should have complexity and be  priced accordingly. What bothers me is that in the field of digital imaging, consumers are not given access to essential features and the software is dumbed down. I refer of course to the lack of proper tagging support in all but a few photo management apps.

In my view, the primary area where the needs of the pro photographer differ from me are in the areas of workflow management, and RAW support. Both of these are quite expensive to implement in terms of software resources. But a home user has no need of workflow, lighttables, non destructive RAW editing etc. What I DO need is a way to catalog and organize my photos using published standards, and not have it cluttered with useless junk which make it incapable of handling a decent sized image library.

Pro's also typically have dedicated, expensive hardware with multiple gigs of RAM. They don't mind spending time in these apps because its their job. I just want to quickly find a few pictures I'm interested in.

As I said before this is like having an mp3 organizer which doesn't support id3 tags, with the only way to get that being to purchase a full blown sound editing studio.

291

General Software Discussion / Re: To Vista or not to Vista that is the ?

« on: May 01, 2007, 10:51 PM »

We should really look at Vista as a new kernel with a lot of improvements under the hood, most of which manage to completely disappear by the time you get to the UI. Microsoft Server products, which apparently don't have to go thru the marketing bastardization process quite so much, are uniformly excellent. Win2k3 and the upcoming Longhorn server are both really neat.

Give Vista about 6-12 months. SP1 will be out and most everyone will be on it and thats when people will start bashing XP as 'quite inferior'. Same thing happens with every MS OS - Win9x, NT, XP

292

General Software Discussion / Re: Irfanview4 released

« on: April 30, 2007, 06:18 PM »

Another one to consider is FastStone viewer - www.faststone.org. Has a different UI than traditional programs in the image view that makes it really useful. These are the big 3 of free image viewers.

293

General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu Linux vs. Windows Vista

« on: April 30, 2007, 02:03 AM »

DrJtoo, you should call Microsoft support again (for the 3rd but hopefully last time, and I hopey ou're not paying for these calls). Ask them to escalate your issue to the next tier, and give them the details of the store where you bought Vista. Microsoft should track down the licensed copy based on your key and at the very least, refund your money, since this is a clear case of the product not working as advertised. This is exactly what a lot of people fear with activation and is the price genuine users have to pay while pirates enjoy life.

I am not suggesting you go back to Vista or even give it a 2nd chance based on your experience, but surely you must get your money back!

294

General Software Discussion / Re: More offensive — Resource bloat or Feature bloat?

« on: April 29, 2007, 01:45 AM »

"*MrCrispy — what is a PHB? Pretty Hot Babe? Pushy Hoarding Butthead? Let us know!"

http://en.wikipedia....i/Pointy_Haired_Boss

"he Pointy-Haired Boss (often abbreviated to just PHB) is Dilbert's boss in the Dilbert comic strip. He is notable for his gross incompetence and unawareness of his surroundings, yet somehow retains power in the workplace.  The phrase "pointy-haired boss" has acquired a generic usage to refer to incompetent managers.

He's every employee's worst nightmare. He wasn't born mean and unscrupulous, he worked hard at it. And succeeded. As for stupidity, well, some things are inborn. His top priorities are the bottom line and looking good in front of his subordinates and superiors (not necessarily in that order). Of absolutely no concern to him is the professional or personal well-being of his employees. The Boss is technologically challenged but he stays current on all the latest business trends, even though he rarely understands them."

I could definitely use some "Pretty Hot Babe's" at work

295

General Software Discussion / Re: More offensive — Resource bloat or Feature bloat?

« on: April 28, 2007, 04:52 AM »

Its really unavoidable. Computer software and hardware have become unbelievably complex. Look at what the avg computer runs today, this would have been unimaginable a decade ago and I'm sure the same will be true for the future.

The point is, the only way to sell new versions of software is to keep adding (often questionable) features and keep expanding the bullet list on the box. Its a sad fact that the majority of buyers (this excludes everyone here and on similar forums) will buy software based on the box art, website look'n'feel, and targeted advertising, with very little research. To be fair, they shouldn't have to. But everyone is greedy, we all want the shiny new features, and we want to have our cake and eat it too!

Writing simple software is very very hard. Its much easier to pile on feature on top of ill-conceived feature. More importantly, its the only way to keep the PHB's and suits happy and market it.

296

General Software Discussion / Whats the best program to learn typing?

« on: April 28, 2007, 01:50 AM »

I can bear the shame no longer, and the truth must be revealed - I do not know how to touch type!

I spend the majority of my day, and lets be honest, more time I should at home, in front of a computer. I'm a programmer, and not an author, so I don't need to go 80 words/min, and I've gotten pretty good at -hunt-and-peck, but I want to learn how to type. A quick google search comes up with dozens of programs, each of which would have me believe are the absolute last word in perfection.

I found this site - http://typing-softwa...are-definitions.html, which compares some of them.

297

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9

« on: April 23, 2007, 12:15 PM »

Why would someone want to create RAR files? In my experience the majority of rar archives come from p2p sources and its the preferred format of the 'scene', but you hardly ever see it for mainstream downloads. The savings over free formats like zip/7zip are far outweighed by the universal zip support built into nearly every OS and utility on the planet. I can safely send zip content to anyone and be sure they'll be able to open it. </end off tangent rant>

298

General Software Discussion / Re: RANT: High Software Prices!

« on: April 17, 2007, 01:10 PM »

For the really big companies like Adobe, Microsoft, AutoCad etc the main software revenues come from business and corporate users. Microsoft will continue to sell millions of licenses of Exchange+Office to companies, and their OS to OEM's. Same goes for graphics professionals using Adobe - in most cases the cost is paid by their employer. So for these companies, complaints by home users are quite meaningless as we can't vote with our wallets.

Then there are vendors who mostly sell their products thru sites like download.com or the hundreds of shareware sites. People usually get there by doing a search and buy what they see, not everyone can or wants to do research. These vendors usually stick with a standard licensing scheme.

The smaller, independent developers are the ones really affected. They usually invest a lot more time and effort and produce high quality software, which is not so popular except thru word of mouth thru forums. Piracy is a very real concern for these guys.

299

General Software Discussion / Re: Mac Software Clones for Windows

« on: April 16, 2007, 12:36 AM »

I would sell my soul for a Win32 port of DevonThink.

300

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9

« on: April 15, 2007, 04:32 PM »

Nudel, based on your guide to the new features in v9 and your post here, I've also decided to purchase DO when it comes out. It helps that I'll be moving to Vista at about the same time on my home pc. I know I should post questions about the program on your forums, but I'm being lazy and its easier to ask an expert . Maybe it will help other users here as well. I have one very simple query - is it possible to make DO behave like xplorer2? By that I mean -

- have double click to select a file in the program even though Explorer has single click
- use the standard 'Commander' keys found in many dual pane managers - such as F5 (copy), F6 (move) etc
- have left/right/tab move between the 2 panes
- Ctrl+Shift+<Drive> goes to that drive

These are the commands I'm used to, and they make a lot of sense. Over time, I want to learn more Opus specific features and use them, but in the meantime I want something familiar which doesn't disrupt my work too much. I have a trial version of DO8 and I haven't been able to get it to do these things.