Messages

1026

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Backup4all for U3

« on: March 23, 2007, 09:06 AM »

It can do any of the above

It can work on device label, device serial number or drive letter, depending on what you want and what the removable medium supports.

I have 2 CD keys that trigger different backups (one data, the other key apps installs and license numbers), and 2 DVD-Rams which again trigger different backups...

This is not a super-slick pro-looking tool - figuring out how to pick file sources and targets took a few minutes puzzling - but it has a lot of features for the price, and the "no hands" feature is peace of mind. I love the fact that I can just tell my mum when i call her "put the usb stick in the computer" and I know it does a backup of all her files (that one is set up to keep 3 backup versions in parallel, should allow to recover from any disaster at mom's)

1027

Living Room / Re: Freeware for time recording?

« on: March 23, 2007, 09:03 AM »

There are at least 2 or 3 ones around the download areas and coding snacks

1028

Developer's Corner / Re: Yet Another Closed Platform - Sound Familiar?

« on: March 23, 2007, 08:47 AM »

It's proprietary, but it's not closed - it's a bit like PDF which was another proprietary but fully documented format and system which allowed a lot of people to create competitors to Acrobat.

The same thing is happening with Flash, there are many tools you can use to build flash

I'm all for open but I am also all for things that work on many platforms at the same level with a certain guarantee of survival and further development. Flash / Flex / Apollo is in many way a lot more cohesive, coherent and multi-platform compatible than a lot of the alternatives including open source.

1029

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: SlickRun

« on: March 23, 2007, 08:42 AM »

I agree f0dder, but fact is, it does 

If i have a game in a window - and I usually have them in a window so i can do other things as well, say run sysadmin tasks in ssh or instant messenger etc. and any transparency effect happens - a bubble message from the system tray, say, or a skin effect, or someone sending me an im in skype... the game suddenly jumps to 1fps... Even if i don't have a game in a window, it does cause slowdown. I have had to change what windowsblind skin I use as most of them have transparency now and that made it impossible to play games in a window. I have had no such problem on a notebook with a nvidia card...

I have had other reports saying that this does happen to others and yes, I agree, the card should be able to handle it so clearly it's something in the ATI drivers.

1030

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Backup4all for U3

« on: March 22, 2007, 06:02 PM »

I use No Hands Backup which has the ability to run particular backup jobs when particular media are connected - whether DVDRam or USB key or other removable drives

Of course it works via a resident watcher program, whereas this backup4all works via autorun I suspect, so a different approach

1031

General Software Discussion / Re: Xara Xtreme Pro / New(ish) Version

« on: March 22, 2007, 05:51 PM »

I do think it's a bit silly of them to make PSD compatibility a pro feature.

I don't need to do the kind of flash it will support, I don't need DTP, but i would appreciate being able to open/import from PSD and also pantone support from an illustration program. But it turns out I have to shell out over $100 to get this... not worth it for me.

It is a nice illustration program, though. Worth trying now that freehand is probably disappearing, and Corel more expensive than ever.

1032

General Software Discussion / Re: I found a jewel of a program: XMplay

« on: March 22, 2007, 05:49 PM »

I actually dislike skinning - I have windows blinds and I would rather have a program that uses my chosen skin rather than one that has its own skinning system...
I'm not sure why so many programs have their own skinning thingie nowadays, you end up having 5 or 6 different looking apps and it confuses everyone

1033

Post New Requests Here / Re: Save web page to directory based on web site in browser title

« on: March 20, 2007, 06:41 AM »

I highly recommend LWA if you are trying to keep archives of pages.

If you're doing it for web design - to explore stylesheets etc. it does rename all the files it downloads so there's a bit of searching to find out which of the folders contains the page you want. Of course each folder is accompanied by a text ini file named something like 4200703011403175312.wsa which contains all the information, so just searching within these .wsa files makes finding the page not *that* long

1034

Developer's Corner / blog post with a list of reference pages / cheat sheets

« on: March 17, 2007, 10:12 AM »

I have bookmarks and/or local copies of some of them, but this is a really nice list

http://www.fuzzyfutu...t-sheet-compilation/

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

1035

Post New Requests Here / Re: a batch Zip program

« on: March 15, 2007, 04:02 PM »

its also an option in total commander

[attachimg=#1][/attachimg]

1036

Living Room / Re: Proxies

« on: March 15, 2007, 01:10 PM »

That's probably because tor does install things at the network level and opens some ports to send and receive connections from other tor nodes. That would make firewalls warn you about it.

1037

Living Room / Re: widescreen monitor question

« on: March 15, 2007, 04:35 AM »

how do you find out before you buy it what the "native" resolution is?

1038

Living Room / Re: cost of running a pc (in the UK)?

« on: March 15, 2007, 04:21 AM »

I got the 4ms of that benq for my husband, and he loves it.
I find that 19" at 1280x1024 feels very pixellated to me, but it doesn't bother him at all. Even in games.

-iphigenie (March 14, 2007, 06:42 PM)

I find that surprising - maybe it is my eyes but I can only see the pixels if I use a hand lens! 1280x1024 is the native resolution of the monitor so any other resolution is likely to look more pixellated rather than less as it would be interpolated.

-Carol Haynes (March 15, 2007, 03:37 AM)

It's mostly visible in photos and in games - and as I said he doesn't mind.

But when i compared it for example to my 17" laptop at similar res things looked better to me on a 17". I have rather acute eyesight (sounds so wrong, like an illness), I can read signs far away in the distance and be annoyed by little things like dust on my sunglasses (or the car windscreen) which really don't bother others. I can see a tiny vibration at the edges of screen at the moment and be kind of distracted by it, which other people don't even notice until i force them to look for it (i suspect my screen is possibly going to die this year, just short of 10 years).

1039

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for 'Open With...' Editor

« on: March 14, 2007, 07:17 PM »

a lot of products have a little extension manager - i think i have one that comes with regrun, one that comes with wincommander, and I'm pretty sure i have at least another 2 that came with one tool or another (either stardock's object desktop, winpatrol, the vcom utilities, registry first aid, or one of those security packages). None are particularly developed or polished.

1040

Living Room / Re: cost of running a pc (in the UK)?

« on: March 14, 2007, 06:42 PM »

I got the 4ms of that benq for my husband, and he loves it.
I find that 19" at 1280x1024 feels very pixellated to me, but it doesn't bother him at all. Even in games.

1041

General Software Discussion / Re: Super Flexible File Synchronizer Pro says Zaine

« on: March 14, 2007, 03:02 PM »

now to get a DC rebate

1042

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Power Desk 6 Pro, half prize until Friday

« on: March 14, 2007, 03:00 PM »

the powerdesk in question is mostly a fancy file manager

1043

Living Room / Re: cost of running a pc (in the UK)?

« on: March 14, 2007, 11:38 AM »

PS: hey, there's a trout smiley! can i borrow it for my guild's forum? We're smiley bulimic with ongoing fish jokes

(http://www.phoenix-guild.net/ 6 fish related smileys. but no troutslap one!)

1044

Living Room / Re: cost of running a pc (in the UK)?

« on: March 14, 2007, 11:28 AM »

Does it really give less eyestrain? I'm really curious about that. As you say that's another great argument if there is a real physical difference (rather than the psychological my-screen-suits-me-just-right, which is real but can happen on any kind of screen)

I have trouble working on certain TFT screens, they often feel very fuzzy and/or dim and i feel i must strain more to read text. I must say that the screen that laptop had was one of the best I have ever worked with, it was crisp and well contrasted and fast enough for games, but most screens I have seen in shops and businesses aren't anywhere near as nice. Of course neither are many of the CRTs. 

1045

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Power Desk 6 Pro, half prize until Friday

« on: March 14, 2007, 11:01 AM »

I have version 5 I think, and the one thing where power desk pro excels is the built in file viewer.
I am used to windows commander yet when I am trying to organise/clean, i find the instant file viewer pane in power desk to speed things considerably - it also previews more formats (at least the pro version does) and you can quickly see inside pdf, office documents etc. without starting anything. I think it might use the engine from quickview or whatever that tool was called.

For example I had an attachment directory for poco mail which had thousands of files, from attached emails (text) to images to pdfs and all sorts of files. I managed to trawl through with powerdesk and delete most but keep the useful one, it would have taken forever had i had to open each file in an image viewer, text editor etc.

The other file management features are fine, although i didnt remember it does context menu extensions. It could be new or it could be that i already have stardock and wirekeys modifying this and powerdesk's changes were kind of unnoticed.

1046

Living Room / Re: cost of running a pc (in the UK)?

« on: March 14, 2007, 09:24 AM »

Yes, the system work by installing a litle ring-like device around the cables which measures the power being used, probably using the magnetic fields that the current generates. I have installed it between the mains point and the electricity meter, so technically it should measure the same thing the meter does.  There is a battery powered emitter which you need to put about a meter away which then sends the data to the receiver. We have a high house and it works everywhere. It's a lot more convenient than the meters you plug in the power socket, but obviously it also costs 4-5 times more.

-- screen --

If you have a 17" CRT or a 19" which you dont use at high res, buying an LCD screen (around£100 nowadays in the UK, cheaper in the US) probably pays for itself in a year. At least in a country where energy prices aren't heavily subsidised. If you want 1600 res the screens cost a bundle more, and I suspect they also consume a bit more so the savings in energy probably can't justify buying one.

-- a little side rant --

My laptop, which got stolen in October (dont get me started how the insurance company still hasnt sorted the claim out!) had a gorgeous 17" wide screen that did 1900x1280. Now I *would* buy a screen like that but they don't seem to sell those as desktop units. It seems I have to buy a 20" screen to get 1600 res. The smallest 1600x1200 I found is http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/92683 which is actually quite tempting (would have put a link to the manufacturer but that site seems broken).

You can tell that the manufacturers have established than when consumers and IT managers shop for screens, the "prestige" factor seems to be in the screen size, not its resolution or contrast ration or anything else. This is of course not the case in notebooks where screen size is also a weight issue and where it's worth doing a 17" high res screen - they clearly think that the same screen on the desktop would not see against all the 1280-1024 19" screens. Shame, I would buy it.

You get the same thing in digital cameras where clearly it seem the number of megapixels is the "prestige" factor, even when there's not that much of a difference for normal users between 6mp and 10mp and other factors would really be far more important... people seem obsessed by size!

1047

Best Text Editor / Re: best text editor was killed by Borland

« on: March 14, 2007, 06:33 AM »

Well i can sympathize with developers.

People ask for features. All the time. If you don't add any, you start losing users. You get criticized for not listening, not developing the products. People start worrying that since it hasnt had an update in a year the product is dead. (heck we do it here sometimes "no update since 2005, oh well, lets look for another product" when it could actually be that it does all it needs to do with no major known bugs and why mess with it?)

So you try to add the ones that a lot of people ask for, the ones that make sense to you, the ones that are easy to add, the ones reviewers keep bringing up as missing from your product in comparative reviews.

And then one day you wake up realising that the tool no longer does its primary function as fast and comfortably as it used to.

It's a fine line.

1048

Living Room / Re: cost of running a pc (in the UK)?

« on: March 14, 2007, 06:24 AM »

Well I have had that electrisave 2 weeks now and it's very addictive.

Since it measures power consumed at the mains in the basement, and sends it to a little receiver, it's very easy to go around turning things on/off and wait and see the effect (it refreshes every 5 seconds or so). I have found that it makes us more aware of what is actually using up energy. And in the 2 weeks our "residual" energy usage has gone down bit by bit as we become more clued up.

My 9 year old 19" crt monitor does consume about 2-3 times the electricity that my husband's flat screen monitor does. Still, its not as much as I thought and the jury is out whether it means it's worth switching to a flat screen. After all I *like* working at 1600 res.

Anyway that device is actually useful, and kind of addictive to watch. Since it also measures temperature and humidity at the location of the display it has long term use. It did cost £60 to buy though.

1049

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Research Note-Taking Program (MindMapper)

« on: March 13, 2007, 02:10 PM »

I haven't tried it but this just appeared today as a new version on file forum

http://jabref.sourceforge.net/

1050

Living Room / Re: Windows Power Shell 1.0

« on: March 13, 2007, 04:27 AM »

I just have trouble with the constant validation that MS always wants.

I own my license of XP but still, it's just a really intrusive thing they are doing every time. I decide to find alternatives.