Recent Posts

101

Living Room / Re: Seagate's Replica: Highly praised foolproof backup drive and software

« Last post by Lutz_ on February 09, 2010, 01:39 PM »

The main drawback is, that the program only backs up a single hard drive - the system disk.  At least it should be good for notebooks. 

Current Rebit "save me" prices seem to have gotten cheaper than mentioned above:
$29.95 and $39.95 . Looks very interesting.

http://www.rebit.com/products.html

-Lutz_ (February 07, 2010, 04:15 PM)

does sound great - would be nice if they gave some more info though - fairly minimal info on their site

-tomos (February 08, 2010, 07:14 AM)

102

Living Room / Re: Seagate's Replica: Highly praised foolproof backup drive and software

« Last post by Lutz_ on February 07, 2010, 04:15 PM »

Current Rebit "save me" prices seem to have gotten cheaper than mentioned above:
$29.95 and $39.95 . Looks very interesting.

http://www.rebit.com/products.html

103

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini Review - Helicon Filter - photo editor

« Last post by Lutz_ on February 04, 2010, 11:34 PM »

Thanks. Great news that Helicon Filter 5 is on the way.   

104

General Software Discussion / Re: Freeware that offers Livetrace like Adobe Illustrator?

« Last post by Lutz_ on December 02, 2009, 11:09 PM »

The paint bucket tool in inkscape can do some of it. Pretty cool but this is the only alternative I know of.

105

General Software Discussion / two more defrag tools - "UltraDefrag" and "Advanced Defrag"

« Last post by Lutz_ on December 02, 2009, 12:19 AM »

I just came a cross these two defraggers which seem to have not been mentioned yet in all the defrag discussions here.

-  UltraDefrag is an open source project which claims to provide a comparatively fast defragmentation.  The program has many of the advanced options found in commercial defraggers and also in MyDefrag.   I have not tried the program myself yet.  According to their forum, the next version should have a much faster full hard drive optimization procedure.
http://ultradefrag.s...ge.net/overview.html

- Advanced Defrag presents some novelties.  The website claims that it defragments MFT, registry , as well as the regular files all without requiring a re-boot and boot-time defragmentation. I gave it a try and it is doing "something" as advertised.  I do not have the expertise to figure out how successful the defragmentation really is.  The fragmentation scan is extremely fast compared to Perfect Disk or Puran Defrag. The simple defragmentation is also  quite fast, but the full optimization took about 20 hours on a 100 GB harddrive that was only half full and previously defragged with Advanced Defrag.  The background defragmentation option did not slow down my computer at all.  You might want to be careful, as the registry defrag also carries out "registry fixes" without offering a backup or an option to decline the fixes. I have not had any problems due to the about 20 fixes it carried out.  Not very confidence inspiring is the lack of a physical address on the Advanced Defrag website.  The authors English seems to need some polishing; but so does mine.   
http://www.advanceddefrag.com/

Does anybody else have any experience with these tools?

106

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for recommendations of RAW photo processor

« Last post by Lutz_ on November 26, 2009, 09:53 PM »

And since I'm insisting on good results from the defaults, it should be possible for me to invoke the tool from the command line, saying "process everything in directory X", as an automated part of my workflow.

-CWuestefeld (November 26, 2009, 10:57 AM)

Bibble can be invoked from image organizers like imatch and idimager via macros to automatically process images and return them to the organizers.  But I guess these organizers are a bit more advanced than Acdsee.

107

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for recommendations of RAW photo processor

« Last post by Lutz_ on November 25, 2009, 10:56 PM »

I agree with JavaJones in recommending the current Bibble 5 preview version. It runs sufficiently stable for me and is the by far fastest option. For me, the UI is also nicely intuitive. The one thing missing currently is a good "local contrast/ clarify" tool.  It will come sooner or later, either as a native tool or as a plugin.  One advantage of bibble is that the plugins can actually work on the RAW conversion pipeline, not like the plugin substitutes in Aperture or Lightroom which work on the already converted images only (doing the same as a photoshop plugin then).  

RawHide provides excellent image quality but is way too idiosyncratic for me regarding its user interface. PSP is a great image editor but horrible as a RAW converter.  Picasa does convert RAW files but you cannot influence the conversion which makes it only an emergency solution.  Helicon Filter again is a great image editor, the quality of the RAW conversions is very good but they are slow and the workflow for multiple RAW conversions is difficult.  

RawTherapee is pretty great throughout.  Give it some more time to get used to the handling.

108

Living Room / Re: You have a computer backup plan.. but does it work?

« Last post by Lutz_ on November 23, 2009, 03:25 PM »

This test looks ambitious.  Perhaps I am not able to navigate this website, but where are the actual tests?  Big introduction, nice feature table, and then I cannot find any tests and only a two-sentence conclusion (Acronis wins on features?).

here's a good blog article where ten commercial imaging apps are compared. 10 Commercial Disk Imaging Software Features and Backup/Restore Speed Comparison
 (see attachment in previous post)

-lanux128 (November 23, 2009, 06:20 AM)

109

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

« Last post by Lutz_ on November 12, 2009, 06:12 PM »

Mr Skipper, sounds like you have implemented some very neat ideas.
Congratulations !!!
How about some screenshots?

110

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 45-09

« Last post by Lutz_ on November 09, 2009, 07:04 PM »

Thanks for the interesting news!!! Time to start the personal genome projects.

111

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quality Comparison: 8 x freeware PDF Readers / Viewers

« Last post by Lutz_ on October 13, 2009, 11:58 AM »

Over here no problems at all with PDF-Xchange.  It has the speed of Foxit and the rendering quality of adobe. All good.

Oh, so I'm not alone... if PDF-Xchange made planes, I would not fly on them.

-urlwolf (October 05, 2009, 05:50 PM)

112

General Software Discussion / Re: Freeware Website Creator For Dummies?

« Last post by Lutz_ on September 29, 2009, 12:06 AM »

NVU is dead (under this name it is no longer developed). The previously mentioned Kompozer is the updated version of it.

113

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Remove duplicate files, folders and archives - DupeTrasher 2009

« Last post by Lutz_ on September 18, 2009, 12:46 AM »

I am just starting to try DupeThrasher.   
My first impression is however: Woaaaaa, what a beautiful user interface.
Congratulations !!!    (Are there any competitions for aesthetically designed UIs?)

(.... other programs published these days get already the name "2010".  2009 sounds almost outdated    )

114

General Software Discussion / Re: Freeware Website Creator For Dummies?

« Last post by Lutz_ on September 18, 2009, 12:34 AM »

Hi,
the free version of WebPlus should be both, user friendly and more than perfectly capable of what you are asking.

http://www.freeserif...re/webplus/index.asp

(Word and very likely Open Office Writer can create simple "webpages", too).

115

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Drive Backup 9.0 Professional - FREE from Paragon at GAOTD; today only

« Last post by Lutz_ on July 31, 2009, 10:49 AM »

Carols link still seems to work   

116

Found Deals and Discounts / Drive Backup 9.0 Professional - FREE from Paragon at GAOTD; today only

« Last post by Lutz_ on July 29, 2009, 04:19 PM »

This is the professional version with disk, partition, and file backup options.

http://www.giveawayo...ion-english-version/

(The commenters on GAOTD also have tips on how to install it later on ???)

117

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Lightcraft Aurora - intuitive image editor; free - today only !

« Last post by Lutz_ on July 15, 2009, 07:30 PM »

No, it is still good for TODAY and it was working for me without problems:

Just go to their website (www.lightcrafts.com) and "buy" the software for free with the coupon code (it is: FREE24 )

21.5 hours remaining to download Aurora (for Mac or PC) free! Enter FREE24 at checkout. www.lightcrafts.com about 6 hours ago from web

Giveaway must be over, i don't "free" anywhere. 

-dantheman (July 15, 2009, 06:39 PM)

118

Found Deals and Discounts / Lightcraft Aurora - intuitive image editor; free- today only! (no longer active)

« Last post by Lutz_ on July 15, 2009, 04:45 PM »

The described free offer is no longer available.


FREE - but today only

Please see their twitter page:
http://twitter.com/LightCrafts

Aurora is an image editor for all those people, who really do NOT want to learn anything about image editing. But is does quite a good job.

119

General Software Discussion / Re: Simple Photo Correction Software

« Last post by Lutz_ on July 08, 2009, 08:55 AM »

Ashampoo has a somewhat similar program called Photo Optimizer  ($15).
Colour Science has its "Image Editor", which is more sophisticated regarding the image editing (http://www.colour-science.com/ , starting from $65).
Or PhotoPerfect Express  with lots of add-on options.  (http://www.arcadiaso...perfect-express.html).

120

General Software Discussion / Re: XYplorer 8.00 released with DUAL PANES (!)

« Last post by Lutz_ on July 05, 2009, 12:54 AM »

There's a option to do this in the configuration dialog.

-DonL (July 03, 2009, 05:24 PM)

Oh, yes indeed !   Very nice.
Thanks!

121

General Software Discussion / Re: XYplorer 8.00 released with DUAL PANES (!)

« Last post by Lutz_ on July 03, 2009, 11:10 AM »

The thumbnail view is, of course, really helpful but I have one problem with it for files from which I have several versions (i.e. several stages of editing). 
When using the thumbnail view I often would still need to know the file format to be able to distinguish versions.  For me it would be great if the thumbnails could be overlayed with file format icons or text for (doc, pdf, tif, jpg, psd, psp, ....) - as an option.
???

122

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera Unite: a server within the browser. Opera innovating as it used to

« Last post by Lutz_ on June 18, 2009, 11:28 PM »

To me Opera Unite sounds like a very cool project. I guess the opportunities are tremendous for creative developers.  The plans seem to be going in part into the direction of Google Wave, which itself seems very elegant.  I really do not mind the required usage of a free Opera account. What worries me a bit is the ecological side of the technology - everybody is going to run his own private server at home 24/7 and happily keep burning the kilowatts?

123

General Software Discussion / Re: XYplorer 8.00 released with DUAL PANES (!)

« Last post by Lutz_ on June 18, 2009, 11:50 AM »

Good to know;

time to give it another try!.

XYplorer 8.00 has been released on 15-Jun-2009. Here's a quick introduction to the main new features:

1) Dual Pane
  Dual Pane file management is synonymous with productivity and ease of use. It combines comfort, speed, and power in the most natural way, namely by letting you look at the contents of two folders side by side.
  Both panes are tabbed, and can be arranged vertically or horizontally, or shown individually as single panes.

-rjbull (June 16, 2009, 03:43 AM)

124

Living Room / Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 23-09

« Last post by Lutz_ on June 08, 2009, 02:28 PM »

1. EndNote Maker's Lawsuit Over Open-source Zotero Dismissed

I guess the next Endnote version will introduce an encrypted file-format?

125

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Xnview vs. IrfanView - integrity issue examined

« Last post by Lutz_ on June 01, 2009, 04:04 PM »

The quibbles between Irfan View and XnView are missing the point.  Both are great programs which I have used a lot and I have donated for IV.  Thanks is due to both developers - actually Microsoft should pay these guys. Without programs like theirs windows would be a lot less usable.
Nevertheless, both XnView and IrfanView are in way up to par with Faststone viewer when it comes usability and elegance -they are both still the faster loading programs and they support way more file formats. But with regard to ease of use and intuitive handling Faststone is having their lunch for several years already.