Messages

1351

General Software Discussion / Re: What do you think of PCTools' Spyware Doctor?

« on: June 16, 2007, 10:37 PM »

I've used trial versions of Spyware Doctor & Counterspy a few months back. They're both good apps but I recall Spyware Doctor having the best detection rate & Counterspy bogging my system down a bit.

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: TextAloud @ Giveaway of the Day 6/16

« on: June 16, 2007, 10:20 PM »

I checked out their site, they seem to have a 'contact us' link instead of the usual 'Purchase' so I guess you'll have to do just that. A Google search for downloadable demos or outright purchase brought up some third party sites which indicates that SAPI voices are available for purchase. Your safest bet it to buy directly from Loquendo after contacting them.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Download Managers

« on: June 16, 2007, 09:25 PM »

That feature doesn't quite work that way for me - it just triggers IDM to kick in, but i still get the pop up box asking me to say "ok".

The popup box can be completely avoided by unchecking the "show start download dialog" & checking the "start downloading immediately..." options.

The downside to this is, IDM will download files you haven't requested. If you have the "download completed" popup & sound notification disabled the process will be completely transparent, not really recommended.

My options are set to just the opposite of what I've suggested above - having the "start downloading immediately..." enabled saves a bit of time but smaller files (that I haven't requested) get downloaded before I have a chance to cancel them.

Any extensions not in that box, IDM does not kick in and Opera ends up handling the download.
Maybe it is because i use opera, not firefox or ie?

You're right, the integration doesn't seem to be as good on Opera... even the force download hotkey didn't work for me. The only way I could get IDM to kick in for sure was to copy the file url to the clipboard. I haven't tried this but if there is a certain filetype you always want to download with IDM you could disable it completely in Opera's download options.

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: TextAloud @ Giveaway of the Day 6/16

« on: June 16, 2007, 12:34 PM »

So please allow me to ask for your opinion on which voices to buy?

Listen to Neospeech Kate and Scansoft Jennifer. Also check out Loquendo voices.

Oh, and for a hilarious but not entirely politically correct experience go to
http://www.neospeech...m/demo/demo_text.php [Internet Explorer only]
and have Miyu [Japanese] read the passage from your post pasted below.

Some years ago I bought a couple of voices, but have not been able to regain them for this new PC of mine. I don't really remember anything about which voices it was, or even from which company - it was VERY seldom I used the program - but I am sure it was not TextAloud. Maybe AT&T NaturalVoices. No, I don't recall.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Download Managers

« on: June 16, 2007, 11:02 AM »

@iphigenie: You can't set up IDM to download all filetypes belonging to a specific category automatically but you can ask it to download individual filetypes automatically. So all that needs to be done is copy-paste all of a category's extensions to the "download automatically" box.


The only catch is he would have to add or remove individual filetypes as and when he modifies a category as the two are not synched. Besides, I'm not sure the OP was asking for this exactly.

@Earthcoder: The first feature as you mentioned is offered by your browser itself.

I realise this is a bit of a cop out but the simplest workaround for the second would be to use a dialog box extender so you just have a dropdown list of category based folders and don't need to browse your computer.

The third (website based downloading) is a bit tricky as it could conflict with the first rule. You need logic on the lines of mail filtering rules that lets you decide which rule gets priority - filetype or website - it would be hard to come by, if it exists at all. 

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General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« on: June 15, 2007, 11:15 PM »

The best support I've got in all these years of using software is via web search engines, newsgroups and forums like this one. Incidentally, I wanted to direct the Tearcopy guys to this thread where I've pointed out what could be a bug. Their 'submit a bug' link took me to a login page. I'm sick and tired of going through the rigmarole of registering and logging in on sites unless it's absolutely necessary & gave up right there. Some blogs even make you check your mail & validate links to post a single comment... wtf!!   

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General Software Discussion / Re: Download Managers

« on: June 15, 2007, 08:28 AM »

I'm sure you'll love it. I remember testing quite a few big players in this category before settling for IDM. It'll need a bit of configuring though.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Download Managers

« on: June 15, 2007, 06:03 AM »

IDM is brilliant, but not free. It has the best site-grabber I've seen built in. I switched from GetRight to IDM around a year back and the boost in speed was significant. It's v.light on resources, without doubt one of the best pieces of software on my system. In freeware, there's FlashGet.

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General Software Discussion / Überwallpaper!

« on: June 15, 2007, 04:46 AM »

I know a lot of you here are too hardcore and are likely to sneer at anyone who'd willingly give away precious clockcycles to fluff like desktop wallpapers but I do like collecting a few great ones. So go ahead and post one or two of your best dt wallpapers here.

I'm partial to upbeat looking ones and larger than life ones of space that get me all tingly! I'm tried and failed miserably at hosting these on Divshare.





The anims are by a very talented French dude who's got tons of other great stuff on his site >> http://nicobou.deviantart.com

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General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« on: June 15, 2007, 04:11 AM »

  Hereeeee we go again! Another software I'll just _have_ to try out. Don't you people realise a lot of this board's members are severely afflicted with OCD? Be gentle!

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General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« on: June 14, 2007, 02:44 AM »

You're welcome Darwin. The bug made the decision a no-brainer for me too. Grorgy does make a good point - Teracopy would make a difference with big jobs. There is an option to disable it from handling all file operations by default. I however don't want to see the 'TeraCopy Here' and 'TeraMove Here' shell context items several times a day when I know I'm not going to TeraAnything Anywhere for a long time.

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General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« on: June 14, 2007, 01:33 AM »

I've just encountered what might be a pretty serious bug in Teracopy.
I was updating some CD writing related utilities (cdspeed.exe, drivespeed.exe, infotool.exe) and downloaded and unzipped the latest versions on my desktop. I then dropped cdspeed.exe to the folder where the original was located. Instead of giving me an overwrite warning, Teracopy just popped up the copy box and closed it - it didn't overwrite the file, it basically didn't do anything. I know for certain the utility wasn't locked by any other process. After fiddling around a bit it seems to me that Teracopy will not do anything if the exe file being overwritten is different. If it is identical to the file trying to overwrite it, it works normally & pops up the overwrite warning. I'm not sure if this'll be replicated on other systems but it seems likely.
 
It's a pretty serious bug when a program pretends to copy a file and actually does zilch. It's time to say Au Revoir, Teracopy for me.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Making the Switch-03: First impressions and first problems after installatio

« on: June 10, 2007, 06:37 AM »

Was feeling a bit left out by not contributing to a relatively hardcore discussion on the board, so here goes...

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Living Room / Re: 20 year Reunion ("there's nothing closer to heaven than being a grad of '87"

« on: June 08, 2007, 10:52 AM »

I am by and large asocial so take this with a fist of salt but if you really have to think about whether to go or not & it causes you some degree of anxiety/anger/etc - don't bother. Once you've decided not to, you'll rid yourself of the negative emotions & get on with your lovely life. 

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General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« on: June 07, 2007, 05:20 PM »

I just ran some cursory copy speed benchmarks for Explorer, Teracopy & SuperCopier2.


It's interesting to note that for copying several small files Explorer was the fastest. I'm pretty certain this has something to do with the buffer size Teracopy sets, I suppose it could be tweaked to get better results.

Supercopier was the slowest in both tests but has some functionality (remove files from queue) that Teracopy only has in its Pro version. There is no mention of speed improvement with the Pro version. I'm sticking with Teracopy as it seems to offer the best balance between speed and features.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Quick search text box for Windows Explorer [XP]

« on: June 05, 2007, 11:41 AM »

Thanks guys. FileLocator Pro is very impressive. A lot of its features seem to be overkill for me but it seems to be _much_ faster than Windows' default search (13 seconds to locate 740 files as opposed to just 3 taken by FLPro!). It let me take over the Ctrl+F & F3 shortcuts in Explorer  as Darwin mentioned & I used Autohotkey to hi-jack the Win+F key too.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Quick search text box for Windows Explorer [XP]

« on: June 05, 2007, 09:49 AM »

I've always used the keyboard shortcuts (Win+F if I'm outside Explorer or F3 from within) but the pane that pops up to the left narrows down the default view and once the results are displayed the default view is lost altogether (I'm aware I can navigate to it using the Back button). I was just hoping someone had made a better way of doing things - maybe an inline ajax like search box that  displays the results in a side pane without making the main folder view disappear.

Another annoying aspect of the default search is, it won't look for hidden files/folders till you specifically ask it to (ie: if you don't want a half-assed search there's a couple of more clicks involved) - fortunately there's a registry patch to fix this.     

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General Software Discussion / Re: Quick search text box for Windows Explorer [XP]

« on: June 05, 2007, 06:51 AM »

Thanks cmpm - I tried it but the "search box" is actually just a filter for the current folder, it doesn't search recursively.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Quick search text box for Windows Explorer [XP]

« on: June 05, 2007, 04:09 AM »

True, I use F3. But I'm looking for an inline text input box always open in every explorer window toolbar (like the Google search box is for browsers).

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General Software Discussion / Quick search text box for Windows Explorer [XP]

« on: June 04, 2007, 07:10 PM »

I'm not talking about desktop search clients plugging into explorer, but a way to use Windows inbuilt search straight from any explorer window via a text input box. Is there any plugin that'll let me do this? 

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What's the Best? / Re: What's the best Journal (Diary) software?

« on: June 04, 2007, 05:14 PM »

Thanks frenzel & tsaint. Advanced Diary seems just right for me - it does everything I need a diary software to do & doesn't carry any bloat. Looks great too.

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General Software Discussion / Re: how to reduce pagefile usage?

« on: June 04, 2007, 04:01 PM »

Assuming you're running XP:

System Properties --> Advanced --> Performance settings --> Advanced --> Change virtual memory

If I were in your place I would consider monitoring the memory usage with something like Process Explorer. I have a gig of RAM and have 10-20 apps running (with realtime virus scan enabled) at any given time and my RAM usage is generally at around 50%. You should not be facing this problem unless you have a really memory hungry/buggy app going gaga! 

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General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« on: June 03, 2007, 09:42 AM »

Yes, you can disable shell integration.

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General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« on: June 03, 2007, 07:22 AM »

I've always used Servant Salamander for extended file copy/move operations coz Explorer (XP) even after years of "evolution" is so pathetically dumb. I like the fact that Teracopy integrates itself into the shell and takes over Explorer. I haven't bothered benchmarking it either... I don't care, it's better than Explorer.

Are the file copy/move operations on Vista any more sophisticated than XP?

Edit: Since Teracopy lets us adjust the buffer size, how do I tell what the optimum value for my system is? Ah yes!... there's always benchmarking, but can I find it using some calculation?

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General Software Discussion / Re: what kind of keyboard you use?

« on: June 02, 2007, 04:38 PM »

Sorry, don't have a photo handy but it's just a plain vanilla keyboard. 107 keys (regular set + power, sleep & wake).