Messages

251

General Software Discussion / Re: FastStone Image Viewer

« on: February 01, 2013, 10:41 PM »

@cyberdiva, ACDSee must surely (?) have more comprehensive management features.
I know it's editor has gotten a very good review (dc summary comparing it to Lightroom but negative about interface, which could be the killer blow - against it I mean).

-tomos (January 30, 2013, 04:06 PM)

tomos, I suspect I haven't really given ACDSee a fair trial.  Two things turned me off at the start.  In part because of the enthusiastic reviews here on DC, I decided to take advantage of a special offer.  But when I went to buy the program, they wanted more than the price they had advertised.  I had to exchange a number of email messages before they agreed to let me pay the price they'd advertised.  And then, less than two weeks later, they came out with a new version.  I assumed I'd get that version for free, since I had bought the previous version so recently.  But the company insisted that I pay for it as an upgrade.  After a rather heated exchange of messages (heated on my part), they finally agreed that I was entitled to the new version at no additional cost.   These experiences somewhat soured my feelings about the company and, possibly, about the program.  

252

General Software Discussion / Re: FastStone Image Viewer

« on: January 30, 2013, 11:57 AM »

Thanks very much, rgdot, for posting this info.  I'm not sure why, but I keep switching from one image viewer to another.  Last year I finally bought ACDSee 15, though I no longer remember why.  And a quick look at FastStone makes me wonder again why I bought ACDSee.  FastStone looks very attractive. 

253

General Software Discussion / Re: Lastpass

« on: January 21, 2013, 11:38 AM »

Daleus, I'm not sure what you mean by a cap on the number of entries one can have in the database.  What database?  The only database I'm aware of is the one holding all my passwords, and in the several years that I've used LastPass, I've never seen anything like a cap on that (I have well over a hundred entries).  Also, I don't recall ever finding that any have disappeared.  So I assume you're referring to a different database, but what is it?

254

General Software Discussion / Re: WinPatrol Plus or AnVir Task Manager?

« on: January 18, 2013, 09:10 AM »

I've used both WinPatrol Plus and, a couple of years ago, AnVir Task Manager Pro.  I found I much preferred WinPatrol Plus.  AnVir had a number of useful features, but as time went on, I trusted it less and less.  Its "security ratings" of programs on my computer were at times way off base, it offered inappropriately alarming warnings when I tried to delete a program from its startup list, and some of its features turned out to be little more than links to other companies' programs.  I finally removed AnVir from my computer. 

I do have some reservations about WinPatrol Plus as well, especially its inability to provide information about some programs on my computer, but on the whole I find it does a very good job of warning me when programs try to insert themselves into the startup menu without my permission or make some other changes I'm not expecting, and it gives me an easy way to control a number of services and tasks.

255

General Software Discussion / Re: Waterfox has now been accepted as a Mozilla project

« on: January 17, 2013, 04:01 PM »

cyberdiva - thanks. The thing is my access via Chrome or IE is fast, it seems only Waterfox is having difficulty. I thought I also tried Firefox but now when I try to launch Firefox Waterfox takes over and I don't seem to be able to run Firefox alongside it. But otherwise my internet access is fine.

-dr_andus (January 17, 2013, 12:13 PM)

This seems further evidence that the problem isn't with Firefox or Waterfox in general but rather something that happened to them on your computer.  I was about to suggest trying a system restore, but I see tomos has beaten me to it.

256

General Software Discussion / Re: Waterfox has now been accepted as a Mozilla project

« on: January 17, 2013, 11:20 AM »

dr_andus, I too am using Firefox (18.0) on Win 7 64-bit, and I had no trouble connecting to the URL you gave.  I also read my Gmail earlier today.  I have noticed that everything seems slower today, but that's not just when I'm using Firefox.  Perhaps some of my neighbors may be doing major downloads, or the stars in the heavens are misaligned, or . . .  Anyway, it may be that the problem you're having is only on your computer, not something affecting Firefox more generally.

257

General Software Discussion / Re: Babylon 10

« on: January 14, 2013, 02:10 PM »

Curt, you may be right.  I know nothing about eTeacher Hebrew, but my knowledge of Babylon and White Smoke makes me doubt that they're the same company.  I say this because Babylon at one point was able to produce a first-class product, whereas I strongly doubt that White Smoke was ever able to do so.  What I've seen of White Smoke tells me that even if it were free it would be overpriced. 

258

General Software Discussion / Re: Babylon 10

« on: January 14, 2013, 08:36 AM »

Curt, many thanks for your update about Babylon 10.  From what you've said, I think I'll stick with Babylon 6, which I  use every day.  It's the best online dictionary I know for Spanish.  I love it, but I've never seen a reason to "upgrade" in spite of their annoying pop-up ads offering me a later version for a good price.  If and when you feel like adding to your comments about version 10, I'd be most interested, but even your relatively short message today was immensely helpful.  Vielen Dank.

259

General Software Discussion / Re: Surprised there's not any talk on Surfulator going Cloud

« on: January 12, 2013, 04:46 PM »

Paul, I agree that it's often easier to influence the development of a program before it has been released.  OTOH, it's harder (at least for me) to know what to focus on until I have something concrete to respond to.  The old chicken and egg dilemma.  I might note, however, that one place where some discussion has taken place is on Neville's blog.  He has posted at least three blog entries dealing with Next-Gen Surfulater.  People have responded, and he has responded to them.  I guess that may be the best possible place to voice concerns/hopes, since Neville reads and responds to what is said.  Here's a URL for the first of the three blog entries:
http://blog.surfulater.com/2012/06/29/surfulater-next-generation-part-1/.  Links to the two later ones are on the right side of the blog entry.

260

General Software Discussion / Re: Surprised there's not any talk on Surfulator going Cloud

« on: January 12, 2013, 03:11 PM »

http://blog.surfulat.../22/to-cloud-or-not/
Is this more of a dying interest in web clipping or a dying interest in Surfulator?

-Paul Keith (January 11, 2013, 04:42 PM)

Speaking just for myself, I have a very great interest in Surfulater.  I've used this program very happily for several years, and I view the direction Neville is moving in with both excitement and anxiety.  But I haven't been all that tempted to discuss this on forums, since I haven't yet seen exactly what the new program will look like, what it can/can't do, how it improves on the present Surfulater, what problems if any it introduces, etc. etc.  All I can say is that Surfulater is one of my favorite programs, and I hope I continue to feel that way about the Next-Gen version.

261

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« on: January 11, 2013, 04:34 PM »

Hi, Curt.  I can't even find a setting that would affect this, but since you've found something you like, that's all that matters.

262

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« on: January 11, 2013, 09:48 AM »

I have a couple of times been using Lazarus, but never became a fan of it; too many situations when it didn't save what I wanted it to save, because there was no crash but just me closing the page and changing my mind.

-Curt (January 10, 2013, 11:38 AM)

Curt, I've used Lazarus for years, and as far as I've seen, it copies EVERYTHING you write in Firefox, not just when there are crashes.  That's certainly the way it works for me.  (For example, it just copied my message here, even though all I did was post it.  And I just checked and found that it was copying this addition to my message, even though I haven't yet posted the modified message.)

263

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: SoftMaker FreeOffice available - each download donates to charity.

« on: December 12, 2012, 09:09 AM »

Interestingly, this used to be the full commercial version in previous years.

-Jibz (December 12, 2012, 04:57 AM)

Yes, I think it's probably version 2010 (the current version is 2012).  Several years ago, I took advantage of an offer to get an old version of SoftMaker Office for free, and that later entitled me to buying the current commercial version as an upgrade rather than having to pay full price. 

264

General Software Discussion / Re: SoftMaker Office 2012 BETA testing

« on: December 05, 2012, 04:07 PM »

Curt, thanks VERY much for posting this!  I haven't yet received this message, but I'm very excited to know that TextMaker will now read WordPerfect files.  Until now, I had to read such files on an old computer that had WordPerfect installed.  I'm pretty basic in my use of PlanMaker, but some of those changes may be useful as well.

265

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) - Mini-Review

« on: December 04, 2012, 08:32 PM »

Thanks, Iain, for posting this.  It told me some things I didn't know and made me feel good about my decision to use MSE as my AV, along with MBAM Pro.   (I confess that the DC thread not long ago about MSE losing some German lab's endorsement after poor zero-day detections shook my confidence a little bit.)

266

General Software Discussion / Re: Alternative to Linkman

« on: November 29, 2012, 07:51 AM »

I doubt that this will help, but I just want to mention that I also have Opera 12.11, and I've had no problem getting the Linkman icon to work.  However, my system is Win 7 Professional 64-bit.  I've also got MBAM Pro, but with protection enabled.  (I can't comment on IE9, since I have it on my computer but almost never use it.  It looks as if I didn't even bother installing Linkman on it.)

267

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« on: November 27, 2012, 04:09 PM »

MilesAhead, I've wondered about this, too.  I already have DDG set as the engine in the Firefox search box, and I just found that if I highlight a word or words and right-click, one of the options is "Search DuckDuckGo for [search term]".  So what more could an add-on provide?  (Indeed, I even checked my add-on list to be sure that the DDG Add-on wasn't already there.)

268

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Rightnote discount sale 50% off @ BitsDuJour 26-27 November

« on: November 27, 2012, 04:02 PM »

Dormouse, thanks for mentioning that RightNote works with Opera.  That's almost enough to push me into buying it.  I'm hesitant, since I already have a competing program that I like, but how silly of me: I see you've got three others. 

269

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: PDF-XChange Viewer ($FREE version) - Mini-Review

« on: November 26, 2012, 04:13 PM »

I hadn't been aware that PDF-XChange Viewer had any OCR capability.  However, very recently the company made PDF-XChange Lite 2012 (with which one can print to PDF, something I couldn't do with PDF-XChange Viewer) free for non-commercial home users.  Moreover, I found that even when the resulting PDF was an image rather than selectable text, the OCR capability worked very well to render the image as readable, selectable text.  Admittedly, I didn't try this on a wide variety of documents and document styles, but I was surprised and pleased with the two times I used the OCR feature.  So I now have free software that will read pdfs, will permit me to print to pdf, and will do OCR.   

270

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Postbox 3 - $9.95

« on: November 25, 2012, 04:45 PM »

What is the advantage of using a desktop client over the browser?

-edbro (November 25, 2012, 02:16 PM)

By "the browser," do you mean something like Gmail, which you access through your browser?  I have a Gmail account, but I much prefer the kind of customization I can do with an email client like Mulberry or Postbox.  For example, I have my email set up so that different kinds of messages go into different Inboxes--I think I have a total of 16 different "inbox" boxes spread out over three email accounts (not including Gmail).  With Mulberry or PostBox, I can indicate which boxes serve as Inboxes and should thus be checked frequently for new mail.  Indeed, with Mulberry, I can create a "cabinet" that contains all these "inboxes," and I can place the cabinet right at the top of my left-hand column, so I can immediately see when new mail arrives (and from what source) without scrolling down my large number of mailboxes (most of which are for storage, not new mail).  As far as I know, with Gmail I'm limited to a single Inbox per account.  For me, this limitation would be a major inconvenience.  That's why I use Gmail primarily for personal mail from friends and family rather than for business or academic or hobby mail.

 

271

General Software Discussion / Re: Lifetime license from Audials+GAOTD: no good

« on: November 23, 2012, 12:27 PM »

One the other hand, I've had good luck with my lifetime license purchases. The two that I have where there has been some controversy (AnyDVD and USB Safely Remove), I think were treated reasonably by the vendor. Though clearly some people disagree.

-mwb1100 (November 12, 2012, 04:24 PM)

I too have been pleased with the way AnyDVD and USB SafelyRemove have honored their "lifetime" commitment.  Add to that WinPatrol PLUS and, I think, Malwarebytes Pro.  I've continued to get updates years and versions later. 

272

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Surfulater at BdJ today ($39.50)

« on: November 23, 2012, 12:21 PM »

Seems to be a long-time favorite among DU regulars.

-tranglos (November 23, 2012, 09:14 AM)

Yes, including me.

You may want to read the comments section though. Upcoming release of Surfulater is going into the cloud.

Yes, that makes me a little nervous, but Neville (the developer) has said that there would also be a locally installed option whose contents would be on the user's computer, so that it can be used even without being connected to the Internet.  So I'm cautiously optimistic that one of my favorite programs will continue as a favorite.

273

Living Room / Re: ~$300 Laptop/Netbook recommendations

« on: November 13, 2012, 06:50 PM »

Oddly enough, those were the two brands we were looking at.  Particularly, this model:

http://www.amazon.co...D+1GB+RAM+Netbook+PC

Rest assured, I'd be upgrading that to 2GB of RAM (and 4GB if it allows).

-skwire (November 13, 2012, 05:02 PM)

Hmmm...three years ago, I bought a Toshiba netbook with some of the same features: Windows Starter, an Atom 1.6GHz processor, and 1 GB of RAM.  I quickly upped the RAM to 2GB, but that didn't really help.  The computer remains incredibly slow.  I imagine the dual core will help (mine isn't dual core), but still, I'd be wary of the Atom 1.6 GHz processor.

274

General Software Discussion / Re: Article about Duck Duck Go search engine in Washington Post this weekend

« on: November 11, 2012, 08:12 PM »

Tinman, your reasons for using DDG are the same ones the Post article cites:

[The developer] bet there was a place in the market for a product capitalizing on users’ emerging annoyances with Google — its search results gamed by marketers; its pages cluttered with ads; every query tracked, logged and personalized to the point of creepiness.

The article talks about DDG as "an homage the original Google — a pure search engine — and its use is soaring...." 
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  At the moment, as the article points out, Google processes billions of searches per day, while DDG processes millions.

275

General Software Discussion / Article about Duck Duck Go search engine in Washington Post this weekend

« on: November 11, 2012, 10:33 AM »

Hi.  The front page of the Business section of today's Washington Post (Nov. 11, 2012) has an interesting article about the search engine Duck Duck Go and its attempt to provide a better alternative to the increasingly commercialized Google.  The article is at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ducking-google-in-search-engines/2012/11/09/6cf3af10-2842-11e2-bab2-eda299503684_story.html (or, if that doesn't work, try http://tinyurl.com/cm6zk2t).