Messages

2026

General Software Discussion / Re: HyperSnap: impressive screen-capture app, today's Bits du Jour

« on: June 05, 2009, 11:49 AM »

HyperSnap was all I used for years, but once I moved to SnagIt I never had the inclination to go back. Last version of HyperSnap was around the time of v4. I probably should look at it again to see how it's changed.

Steven, now's the perfect time for you to write us up a comparison of the two. 

2027

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 evaluation

« on: June 05, 2009, 11:42 AM »

It's most interesting you're aware of the corporate motivations.  Guess you must be on the BOD?

-MilesAhead

f0dder doesn't have any crystal ball or inside track on information. When the public beta cycle for Windows 7 was announced the motivations (corporate and otherwise) were prominently announced on various blogs of the Windows 7 development team members.

All I can tell you from personal experience is that I'm running Windows 7 on a four year old computer with a graphics card that is at least four generations old and this OS is running better, smoother, and faster than any version of Vista or XP ever did.

I can also tell you that which version of Windows 7 that is installed in the beta versions so far released is mandated by the contents of an .ini file. People have hacked the .ini file and installed the home flavors of Windows 7 with no difference in performance. The only differences from the Ultimate install were missing features (which is understandable and by design) and the Ultimate serial numbers don't work on those versions (which is also understandable and also by design).

Unless one has a vertical app that requires a special version of Windows or is deadset on living in the past (OMG! Classic Mode is gone! [darth vader voice] Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! [/darth vader voice]) most people are going to be very happy with the new OS.

And to give you a personal perspective on my words, I really, really enjoyed Windows XP when it was released, but when Windows Vista came along I was very ambivalent about the whole Vista experience.

2028

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Feature request: a real Start button?

« on: June 05, 2009, 11:30 AM »

It's not that I didn't misread your feature request I just misremembered what that application I linked to did.

That's what I get for trying to save Mouser some work. 

2029

Living Room / Re: Bad-Actor ISP Shutdown by FTC

« on: June 05, 2009, 11:24 AM »

The ruling was made at the request of the FTC, which has a long history of history with Pricewest.

While great news, what exactly is "a long history of history"? 

2030

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it time to start a new AntiVirus/Internet Security Suite review thread?

« on: June 05, 2009, 10:23 AM »

To anyone following Agnitum's offerings, I just downloaded their latest beta version of their security suite v6.7 beta 4 and the changelog states they are using a new anti-virus engine. I haven't been using it long, but it seems like my system is more responsive and not lagging as much with the previous betas.

Helpful tip: Don't even try to install any version of Agnitum's suite older than v6.7 on Windows 7 or your unhappiness level will be great.

2031

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it time to start a new AntiVirus/Internet Security Suite review thread?

« on: June 05, 2009, 10:20 AM »

Avast's latest program update is known to interfere with The Bat! Just look for CodeTRUCKER's posts on this forum. It's also known to interfere with Newsbin Pro. Those are just the two I know of in recent memory. Fortunately, in both cases just adding an exclusion to the respective programs' download directories clears up the problem.

IE8 is the problem with your lagging. Microsoft's new browser doesn't handle very well long lists of restricted sites. The minute I saw in the IE8 beta that they took away the address bar auto-complete I knew there was someone incompetent in charge. Your only solution is to either switch browsers or stop using the restricted sites functionality of Spybot.

2032

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 evaluation

« on: June 05, 2009, 10:13 AM »

If you didn't change anything, you ran it at 800x600

-f0dder

Then I guess I ran it non-native. It's a very strange little game with a very strange sense of humor about it.

And your XP swapfile size was probably set by the OEM that assembled your machine...

Oh yeah, what f0dder said to the millionth degree. The first thing you do when you buy any pre-built machine is you wipe that sucker and do a clean install of the OS of your choice. The OS install that comes out of the box is just a drive image copied onto the hard drive and usually chock-ful of crapware.

Doing a clean install lets the Windows installer make intelligent decisions about the machine it is being installed on rather than having to rely on what was gained from the installer on who knows what machine the drive image came from. Another added benefit is your machine won't be slowed down by all the crapware, demoware, and near-malware the OEM pre-installed on the machine for you. Some of that stuff embeds itself so deep that the only way to make sure it's totally gone is a re-format anyway.

2033

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best TV Show Renamer Around (afaik):theRenamer

« on: June 04, 2009, 08:32 PM »

While I have seen more powerful, versatile renamers I don't think I have ever seen one especially tailored to the task of renaming TV shows. Excellent find...

2034

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 evaluation

« on: June 04, 2009, 08:31 PM »

I don't have it installed currently, but I bet I ran it at native resolution as I didn't change any options at all when I did run it. I just installed it and off I went.

2035

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 evaluation

« on: June 04, 2009, 04:42 PM »

does your WoG handle fullscreen non-native resolutions? If so, then I'll write the problem off as a nvidia driver bug (although it's weird that other games in non-native resolution has no trouble going fullscreen).

-f0dder

I'm the wrong person to ask about native vs. non-native. I'm one of those mythical curmudgeons you always hear about who refuses to use an LCD monitor. I'm happy over here with my 70 pound 22" NEC Multisync FP2141SB CRT monitor. When those new-fangled LCD monitors can match the visual quality of this Diamondtron tube of mine only then will I make the switch.

2036

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« on: June 04, 2009, 04:36 PM »

I knew what you meant, but I was just having a little bit of fun.  Yeah, I know...I'm easily entertained.

I played Fountain of Dreams & when the page you linked to said it was a disappointment to Wasteland fans the person who wrote that was being very kind, to say the least.

I didn't know about Brian Fargo owns the rights to Wasteland. While I respect what he did for the original I'm not so sure the people over at DuckAndCover are doing the right thing for putting so much faith in him doing a better job than Bethesda. Looking at that Line Rider and what they did to The Bard's Tale his company isn't exactly showing that they are going in the right direction.

2037

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it time to start a new AntiVirus/Internet Security Suite review thread?

« on: June 04, 2009, 01:47 PM »

If you should ever wish to move to a different router it may be possible if that Netgear has a setting that will let you put it into bridge mode.

Avira is probably one of the best free AVs & in spite of the false positives I usually prefer recommending it over Avast. Avast just interferes with too many applications.

You may want to consider adding Spyware Blaster and Spybot Search & Destroy. They are both free & very useful.

2038

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« on: June 04, 2009, 01:40 PM »

Too late...I bought both Fallout 1 and 2 when they hit the shelves & have played them both through more than once.

I'm working my way through Fallout 3 & I'm having a blast with it. One just has to keep in mind that it is more of a spiritual successor to Fallout 2 (much like Fallout 1 was the spiritual successor to Wasteland like you mentioned) rather than a traditional sequel. I've been downloading some mods off of Fallout Nexus & some of them have me giddy like a schoolgirl.

But....I'd love to see an updated Wasteland using the latest state of the art graphics, game mechanics, and UI.

2039

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: MS Technet subscription

« on: June 04, 2009, 10:29 AM »

Microsoft history is full of silly mistakes like that. My favorite one, and one I got in on, was back in the days of Windows 98. You could fill out a request form on their web site & you'd get four CDs in the mail for trial of their products: One was a time-limited copy of Windows 98, the second disc was Microsoft Office, the third was Microsoft Publisher, and the fourth was something I forgot.

It was a great promotion for Microsoft till someone realized that the Windows 98  disc was the only one time-limited. Everything else was full retail products...corporate versions that didn't require serial key input, too.

Ahh...good times.

2040

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« on: June 04, 2009, 10:24 AM »

Someone else in this thread mentioned it, but I'll bring it up again....the grand-daddy of all post-apocalyptic RPGs Wasteland. It had absolutely horrific graphics by today's standards (EGA), but it had a wonderful story & is another one of those wonderful intellectual properties that has been lost to the sands of time. I don't think anyone knows anymore who owns the rights to it so it has never been re-done.

2041

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 evaluation

« on: June 04, 2009, 10:17 AM »

Well, thank God we fixed your goo flushing.

I ran WoG on Windows 7 with an ATI card and I didn't notice any corruption of anything on exit on my system.

2042

Post New Requests Here / Re: "Backdrop" for Windows

« on: June 04, 2009, 10:14 AM »

Distracted by shiny things? Laughs...I must have missed that part as I just glossed over the description. I think everyone is more prone to distraction than we used to be due the way things have changed culturally speaking.

As for Macs, I have nothing against them or the people who use them. I have used Macs before and they just don't work the way I work. This isn't as bad as it used to be, though. Before OS X those poor souls didn't even have pre-emptive multi-tasking.

2043

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it time to start a new AntiVirus/Internet Security Suite review thread?

« on: June 04, 2009, 10:10 AM »

mnemonic,
You spoke about routers and that is something a lot of people ignore. If you get a good firewall that performs real stateful packet inspection you can circumvent a lot of the random attacks out there and then concentrate on defending on the reduced amount of crap that makes it through.

My recommendation is to visit the third-party firmware web sites for routers such as DD-WRT, Tomato, OpenWRT & find the firmware you like best. Once you've done that carefully look over your chosen firmware's list of supported routers & get buy the one that has the features you want at a price you can afford. Once you get that firmware installed you'll have a firewall appliance running Linux offering you firewall features that are usually only available on devices costing $500+ dollars.

As for security products, I can't sum it up any better than saying it's like walking a tightrope. The more features a product offers to secure your PC the more resources it's usually going to take up. KAV, for example, makes a system feel more sluggish than one running NOD32. One of the reasons this is because KAV is looking out for a lot more trojans and malware than NOD32. Even if you are fine with the resource usage of KAV, moving up to the single-stop security solution of just getting the KIS security suite isn't necessarily a no-brainer because the firewall in KIS is not as good as some offerings.

As for free anti-virus programs one has to realize that generally speaking one is going to have to put up with more false positives, perhaps reduced features, and definitely getting AV signatures at a later date than those using the paid version of the same product.

Firewall programs are not easy to choose, either. Generally, the most secure ones are the ones who offer the most granular control over your system. Unfortunately, with that granular control usually comes increased popups like with Online Armor. I understand that someone can get irritated and frustrated with all the increased questions of allow this and disallow this after installing one of those products, but you can't let it get the best of you. As long as you are telling the firewall program to remember your decisions as you progress through the popups you are only going to have to answer each of those questions once. After the firewall has been trained on all your installed programs you're only going to see a popup question once a week or two...or even less.

The security software market is unique in that you will always be better off staying away from the major market players that overflow store shelves. Keep McAfee, Norton, TrendMicro, and BitDefender off your PC and you'll generally be a happier person for it.

2044

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Feature request: a real Start button?

« on: June 03, 2009, 08:45 PM »

I missed this topic first time around, scary taskbar girl. Funny you should be the one asking about how to remove something from a taskbar. 

Anyway, if your friend is still wanting to do such, maybe PresStart v1.3 will do what he is looking for. It's written by the same guy who wrote TrueLaunchBar.

http://www.tordex.com/tools/

There are a few other tools on that page he might find useful as well.

2045

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: MS Technet subscription

« on: June 03, 2009, 08:33 PM »

This promotion was a reward for filling out a survey for MS available to a select few. Once MS caught on that the giveaway link was being used by everyone and their brother they shut it down.

Don't feel bad for not making it in, reports are trickling in that illegitimate accounts are getting shut down.

2046

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it time to start a new AntiVirus/Internet Security Suite review thread?

« on: June 03, 2009, 12:58 PM »

When you're dealing with Avira one thing that you will have to get used to is false positives. Every release I have tried to date has way too many false positives for my liking.

2047

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it time to start a new AntiVirus/Internet Security Suite review thread?

« on: June 03, 2009, 09:40 AM »

I bought Agnitum's suite for the firewall mostly. In every firewall test I have seen 3 products dominate the top of the charts every time: Agnitum's Outpost, Comodo, and Online Armor.

Comodo has way too much drama swirling about it for me to ever take it seriously as a product that's going to keep my PC safe no matter how well it does in tests. Online Armor, while good, is quirky at times and the numerous BSODs people are reporting with the product doesn't leave me feeling warm and secure. Online Armor does not yet support x64 or Windows 7 yet, either.

Even if I eventually end with turning everything off in Outpost except the firewall and using it alongside another anti-virus I still think I got a good deal.

2048

General Software Discussion / Re: TB! Connection to host broken... "DELE 414", "RETR 423" over and over??

« on: June 03, 2009, 09:29 AM »

I've only just installed AntiSpamSniper and it has substantially slowed my downloads. Of course, I'm only downloading a few at a time, so doesn't really matter to me.

-Dormouse

Sorry I missed this message the first time around, Dormouse, but if you are having "substantially slowed" downloads then you may have AntispamSniper configured to check too many DNSBLs. For every DNSBL you have enabled, AntispamSniper has to check with that server against each email you receive.

2049

General Software Discussion / Re: Is it time to start a new AntiVirus/Internet Security Suite review thread?

« on: June 02, 2009, 06:55 PM »

I know what you mean. There's been more than a couple programs I missed getting at a reduced price that I ended up regretting I didn't get for one reason or another.

I nearly passed on the Agnitum offer at the time as their software didn't knock my socks off at the time, but figured I'd end up regretting it if I did.

2050

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« on: June 02, 2009, 04:39 PM »

I loved Privateer as well. I just didn't play it until sleep deprivation stepped in...I actually stopped to sleep with that one.

The problem with so many of the older games and why they haven't been re-done is that either no one knows who owns the intellectual property anymore or, in the case of Privateer, the IP is own by total asshats like Electronic Arts.