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1026
Living Room / Re: Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
« Last post by J-Mac on June 16, 2010, 09:00 PM »
superboy, Addza doesn’t tell or show you very much on the web site, do they? They describe their "Flexible Printing Options" as
Print your addresses with ease. Choose the fields you would like to print and just hit the print button. Unlike most other address book softwares, Addza has an inbuilt Print to PDF option that will let you print your addresses directly into a PDF file.

Also they don’t give any info regarding how many email addresses, phone numbers, custom fields, etc. they allow. If I am going to download and install an app just to give it a look I at least need to know something about the features. Addza just doesn’t give me enough to even want to try it.

Thank you.

Jim
1027
Living Room / Re: Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
« Last post by J-Mac on June 16, 2010, 01:06 PM »
Ah!  Jim, I understand what you are looking for.  I'll see if Handy can do that tonight, I don't see why not...and easily at that.

I once looked into the online capabilities of Handy and also A-book.  But this was before I had a website and before cloud computing became so big.  Now, I can just put a report on my website and find all my contacts from there.  i don't need to be adding and editing contacts when I'm on the run anyway.

Also, as for dialing, I'm your expert there.  I looked heavily into that.  Handy won that battle, hands-down.  I'll tell you why.  For dialing, I wanted it to be as quick and easy as possible.  All the applications I tried had too much clicking and windows popping that I had to later close, it was all very cumbersome and annoying.  What was great about Handy is that you dial, and the little window will pop up while dials.  but then you can set it to automatically close after a few seconds, which is GREAT.  That means, you just click once to dial, and that's it.  No extra windows left over afterwards, and no multiple clicking while dialing.  it was the only one that did this.

Hey SB - I'm not really interested in Auto-dialing or any dialing for that matter. However the printing options seem to be very light. Also, Handy has a butt-ugly UI, doesn’t it? I realize that as long as it does its job the interface shouldn’t matter...  But man oh man, this is ugly!! Actually the printing capabilities might be its saving grace for me.

The only one I have installed that I like using (and looking at!) so far is the Efficient Address Book, believe it or not. But its printing options suck so that one's out.

Thanks!

Jim
1028
Living Room / Re: Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
« Last post by J-Mac on June 16, 2010, 12:56 PM »
Jim,

Quite right on the fence sitting business! I do plan to purchase StatTrak, though and when I do, I will use it primarily to keep up with addresses and other information on church members as well as family members.

You are right on the personal versus business editions. When I do buy, it will be the business edition for the custom fields. Let me say that the one feature that really sold me on StatTrak is the ability to add individuals to a family along with personal information such as birthdays for that individual. If I remember correctly, this was one of the few relatively inexpensive programs that would allow me to do that.

Mark

Mark, my Start-Trak comments are above in my reply to steeladept. Will you be getting the Business edition? Or are the limitations in the Personal one adequate for you? Just curious.

Thanks!

Jim
1029
Living Room / Re: Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
« Last post by J-Mac on June 16, 2010, 12:52 PM »
I never liked Outlook much for email; it always managed to be limited in areas I wanted the most. IMAP for example, was always difficult to use freely in Outlook. (I am referring to versions up to and including Office 2003's Outlook build). Contacts were always Outlook's strongest point IMO however as my PST grew in size I would experience more and more corruption sneaking in. And it felt like when I really needed to get some important piece of information that was exactly when Outlook wouldn’t open and needed to be "fixed". Drove me even crazier than I already am!)
Alas, here I must agree whole-heartedly.  I do use Outlook as a PIM and just forgo the email components (very heavy PIM, but effective).  I don't bother even setting up email accounts, so these issues don't affect me anymore.  I use Outlook for contact and calendar management because it offers all the functionality I want (and a lot more that I don't!), sync's with just about everything, and has not previously been bested by anything else.

Do you intend to use this request with calendaring as well?  If not, why not a simple Access contact list application?  I believe Microsoft built one eons ago as a trainer for Access that was basically a quite capable phonebook.  With this database, you could expand your fields as needed and create reports formatted any way you like.  Of course this assumes you know or are willing to learn Access....

Ahhh, regarding Access, I gave up on it after (I think) the version that came with Office 2003. Prior to that I could get by with relatively simple databases. However once they made the VB editor pop up whenever I wanted to add something my brain starting melting! I was never quite able to wrap my head around it and feel comfortable at all. TBH, dBaseIII+ was the last DB app that I really excelled at. In dBaseIV Borland tried to force users to use the Q menu and I didn't like that at all; you could still work the back end but it tried hard to put you back out front. Access was OK till the VB attack. I stay away from it now because even with a nice, well-designed DB it can still suddenly pop me into VB and start shaking all over!

I installed the Start-Trak trial and I'm not liking it too much. I couldn't live with the personal version; too few fields. I can see having a "Business" version for linking networked computers, web access, etc. Collaborative stuff. But they shouldn’t limit personal users to ONE email address per contact! Kinda silly and IMO just making reasons to make customers purchase the business edition. Methinks this one is getting uninstalled shortly!

Thanks!

Jim

Whoops! You didn't point me toward Start-Trak, did you?! Pretty sure that was Mark - I am obviously getting confused, finger-tied, or whatever!   :huh:   ;D   Start-Trak comments still stand however.  :)
1030
Living Room / Re: Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
« Last post by J-Mac on June 16, 2010, 11:51 AM »
Thanks again folks. A few comments:

@superboyac:  Actually both seem to offer decent printing features. My main reason for wanting this is that my much better half is just starting to get comfortable with computers (despite my prodding for years now!) but she still will not jump on the box to get someone's phone number, address, etc. She prefers a good old-fashioned phone book with the numbers scribbled in it. But as our contacts list grows such books become outdated fast and trying to print add'l pages for them can be hell. I want to be able to print out a "phone book", whether it is a group of pages that can be punched and placed into a physical book or even just a nice, well organized listing. I really don’t like apps that just print one "card" per page. When you get to 300 or even 500 contacts that is a really big, heavy list/book! Both Start-Trak and Handy appear to have the ability to do what I want. I'll do a trial with both and see for sure.

@steeladept:   

1) I need my contacts when I am away from home.  At home, I can just look them up in the family phonebook (which, yes, I did port to Outlook for ease of maintenance, safekeeping, etc., etc.).  If it doesn't synch with the most popular phones and devices, it really misses the mark for me.

If the app I settle on has decent reports I can post one online and get access from any computer if needed.

2) I want something that has a huge list of fields available, but allows me to customize it to just use the fields I want/need.  Moreover, ideally I want these mapped to match those in my mobile device (probably easier and more lucrative to provide a mobile version of the app to sync to).

This used to be a prime consideration for me at one time but I no longer use smartphones. (Which is amazing since I once wrote programs for Palm, PPC, and then Symbian Series 60!). Now I just use the best regular cell phone I can get and leave my computing to computers.  8)

2a) If a separate app is deemed the correct route to go, make sure it integrates fully and can dial/message/whatever just like the native app can so you can ignore it completely (delete it if possible).

This is what I want - a separate contacts app; no PIM necessary. I would only go with one of the Outlook-clones if the contacts module was that much better than any of the stand-alones I find.

These have always proved to be way to much for any PIM I have found in the past other than Outlook.  Even then, Outlook doesn't satisfy all these requirements (specifically the ability to remove unwanted fields), but at least it doesn't miss any information.

I never liked Outlook much for email; it always managed to be limited in areas I wanted the most. IMAP for example, was always difficult to use freely in Outlook. (I am referring to versions up to and including Office 2003's Outlook build). Contacts were always Outlook's strongest point IMO however as my PST grew in size I would experience more and more corruption sneaking in. And it felt like when I really needed to get some important piece of information that was exactly when Outlook wouldn’t open and needed to be "fixed". Drove me even crazier than I already am!)

@Mark:  Aha - so you are still on the fence? Or pretty much decided on Start-Trak? BTW, one thing I did notice is that the Personal edition is more limited than I originally realized: No custom fields, no add'l email addresses, etc. It appears that if you want most of the little extras like that you have to get the Business edition at almost 2X the price. That might just place my bet on Handy Address Book. Am I reading all that correctly?

Thanks!

Jim
1031
Living Room / Re: Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
« Last post by J-Mac on June 15, 2010, 11:28 PM »
I want to thank everyone for the suggestions. They turned up a number of really nice-looking apps that I hadn't found previously.

It looks like it is down to Start Trak Address Manager or Handy Address Book. WinOrganizer looks pretty nice but as it's a full PIM it is a lot more than I need, and priced accordingly. Custom Addres Book looks pretty decent also, though its UI looks like it stepped right out of the first Windows release. Probably would work just fine but the other two I mentioned above have similar features and better UIs.

SB, you say that you are using Handy Address Book? How are the printing options? They don’t mention much on their web site about printing. Start-Trak shows a heck of a lot of printing options and the overall features look to be as good as if not more extensive than Handy. mwfuss, you say you did use it; any reason you are no longer using it?

Thanks!

Jim
1032
Living Room / Re: Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
« Last post by J-Mac on June 14, 2010, 09:12 PM »
As it happens, one of the 2011 NANY pledges is a new address book/contacts app. So here's your chance to contribute some ideas and maybe get the contacts management app *you* want. :)
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=22723.0

- Oshyan

Yeah but I can't afford to wait till the 2011 NANY apps are ready. I kinda need something now. There was a contacts app in last year's NANY too. Unfortunately development seems to have stopped in the early stages.

Thanks!

Jim
1033
Living Room / Re: Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
« Last post by J-Mac on June 14, 2010, 09:09 PM »
Ah!  one of my favorite subjects.  I actually joined this forum initially because I was looking for addressbook software.  Unfortunately, addressbook software are considered outdated today because everyone just uses whatever is on their email program, and more accurately, whatever they use for their cell phones.  Most people are fine with just having their contacts on their phones.

here are the threads that talk about this.  Even though these are old threads, the software mentioned hasn't changed.  My favorite that I still use is Handy Addressbook.  It's the best of the bunch.
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1898.0
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1155.0
Addressbook Shootout

Despite what those threads say, I am currently using Handy Addressbook as my contacts manager.

Thanks SB. I did look at those and am checking out some of those apps, but since the threads are two years old I thought I would get some up-to-date info.

Thanks again!

Jim
1034
Living Room / Re: Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
« Last post by J-Mac on June 14, 2010, 03:38 PM »
Just rereading about EPIM and an added bonus is it will work with your existing GMail account information (as well as Palm, Windows Mobile, and Outlook).

Are you still talking about Essential PIM? Oddly enough the Efficient Address Book developer also has Efficient PIM, Pro and Free versions. That would be easy to get the two mixed up! I have seen people mention one or the other of those PIM programs but I couldn't say whether it was Efficient PIM or Essential PIM now. Too close for comfort - looks like one might be named to mimic the other. Just don’t know which, though.

Regarding T-bird, I won't install that while I am using Postbox. Postbox is developed by the guy who initially developed T-Bird for Mozilla and I would think the Address Books are about the same. Equally BAD!

Thanks!

Jim
1035
Living Room / Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
« Last post by J-Mac on June 14, 2010, 03:15 PM »
Anyone like to recommend a contact manager for personal use?

First of all, I am not using Outlook so please don’t bother recommending it. Gmail's contacts are terrible IMO. Google insists on adding any address I Send mail to, plus they require me to add any contacts that keep getting sent to spam, so it is always cluttered up with crap I don’t really wish to keep as contacts. Postbox, which I am currently using for email, has a really lousy address book. Can't add much in the way of details, minimal sorting/filtering, and if a contact has only address or phone number but no email address it cannot be added. I have a free Highrise account but that is actually very limited also. Wouldn’t help if I paid either - the interface/layout is just not that good IMO.

I have looked at a few stand-alone programs: Efficient Address Book and Contact Wolf. Anyone familiar with either? Or any others you know of that are good specifically for managing personal contacts? What I want to do is fairly simple:


  • Add contacts with ability to add details, like spouse, children, birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
  • Able to add notes and if possible, links to associated files.
  • Ability to slice and dice the data in many ways.
  • This one I have had difficulty finding: Ability to print the address book without having to print them as a series of separate cards.



Thanks for any ideas.

Jim
1036
Living Room / Re: WebCam Advice Needed
« Last post by J-Mac on June 13, 2010, 11:13 PM »
I just tried that link again in Google Chrome figuring the "exception" is browser-specific. Page looks different but is basically the same:

[attach=#1][/attach]

Jim
1037
Living Room / Re: WebCam Advice Needed
« Last post by J-Mac on June 13, 2010, 11:04 PM »
Sure, here's the link:  https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=23031.new;topicseen#new

Now it brings me directly here because I already had to go through Google's multi-part authorization process and add this domain as an "exception". You know, are you really, really sure you want to go THERE?!?!

Jim
1038
Living Room / Re: WebCam Advice Needed
« Last post by J-Mac on June 13, 2010, 10:31 PM »
Very happy with the QuickCam Pro 9000 here. If you pick the right options in the installer you can avoid installing their crapware (or if you're on Windows 7, let it get the drivers from Windows Update).

Ehtyar.

It wasn’t crapware - just a poorly design driver. I'm not condemning Logitech cams in general; just an isolated bad experience here.

Thanks!

Jim

PS - I clicked the link in the email notification and Google didn't want to bring me here - labeled DC as a dangerous site.
1039
Living Room / Re: WebCam Advice Needed
« Last post by J-Mac on June 13, 2010, 10:13 PM »
I bought, installed, ripped out, and returned a Logitech Pro Cam 5000 (think that is the correct name) 3 or 4 years ago. Immediately after installing, on a computer that was all of 5 days old, it sent me into a series of crashes that had me almost reinstall Windows. Turns out they had released a really poor driver - really poor! Not to trash Logitech's web cams needlessly but that one incident has kept me from trying another of theirs ever since.

Jim
1040
-nice2 (="nice feature"+"nice price")!

At this price I would say Revo Pro should be considered a very fine offer. However, I would still say it is a little clumsy to figure out how to use. But of course, I may not have demonstrated proper patience to read the f#¤*%¤g manual...


Same here, Curt. I thought I had the Hunter mode down pat and last year it changed some and I realized that I didn't really know enough about it at all!

Jim
1041
I just saw your replies and wondered why I hadn't received notifications and then I saw these were all posted within a short period. So I didn't miss anything!

Thank you for the screen cap for that discount Merle1 - I hadn't noticed that here. Good eyes! Thank you also for your little mini-review of the differences you noticed. That feature (non-feature??) you warned about: this is a known issue? I would think that the developer would not make that the default and warn loudly about the potential problems with it. Of course maybe he has and I haven't seen it because I haven't installed the Pro version.

I'll have to take a closer look at the Pro version to see if there is anything that would be important to me.

Thanks again!

Jim
1042
Living Room / Re: Reasons to be Afraid of Driving in China
« Last post by J-Mac on June 09, 2010, 09:45 PM »
Some of those HAD to hurt. A lot! I felt bad laughing at a bunch of them.

Thank you.

Jim
1043
Not sure it was mentioned before but now Revo exists in a commercial version, with a much more powerful feature that monitors exactly the changes made on the system, apparently.

Hey Merle1,

Do you have the Pro version of Revo installed? Are there really "much more powerful features" in Revo now? I know that when I first saw that Revo Uninstaller had released a commercial version I went to the site with all intention of purchasing it, since I had used it regularly for some time now. However it was somewhat more expensive than I had expected. (~ $40 USD for 1 computer). Also it states that price is for one computer only; two computers will cost me ~ $30 each, or $60 total. Do they not allow installation on one desktop and one notebook/portable computer with the main license? They don’t mention anything on the web site.

I don’t know... the price may be fair but I have never shopped one-task software programs like Revo before. It just "feels" like $40 is too high to me.

Thanks!

Jim
1044
General Software Discussion / Re: PikyBasket replaced by Copywhiz
« Last post by J-Mac on June 09, 2010, 01:48 AM »
I purchased Piky Suite last July, a little under 11 months before the release of CopyWhiz. I feel that it was less than spectacular as a "suite". Usually programs yoked together and called a suite are closely related, or at least remotely related. I never saw Piky Suite's grouping of programs as that related. Unless you say that all are file system related, I guess, but not really close enough to be a "suite" IMO. I am certain that I underused the suite; I use Directory Opus as my file explorer/organizer/manager and that has much of the same functionality but performs it all a good bit quicker.

I admit I was put off by the upgrade offering and will not be purchasing the upgrade. I will most likely just continue using the one piece of Piky Suite that I am using now. I also have licenses for RecentX and NoteZilla. NoteZilla is a true, bonafide killer of a program; the best sticky notes program on the market IMO. RecentX is a tremendous concept but unfortunately has been troublesome here - mostly in the way of speed (or lack of same) and the fact that I cannot control the indexing of RecentX as it competes with the file activity it is trying to index.

Having purchased every program Conceptworld offers I was surprised by the upgrade requirement, especially since they are admitting that Piky is no longer very useful for OS's past XP. But hey, there's more things in life than this to get worked up about so I won't sweat it!

Thank you.

Jim
1045
General Software Discussion / Re: Google Chrome: Time for a Second Chance?
« Last post by J-Mac on June 08, 2010, 09:20 PM »
Well they did fix the decades-old (it seems) print selected bug, at least in the Dev channel.  :Thmbsup:

It's come a long way extension wise, but still missing a few of my faves.

Oh, there's an annoyance that I forgot to mention: no print preview. Whose bright idea was that "feature"?

Jim
1046
I use Chrome now about 40-45% of the time. (Well, that was one way of saying a little less than half the time). There are still a few features and extensions that keep me from using it full-time:
  • Inability to move the tabs from the very top of the browser - they interfere with a few things I have up there.
  • Zotero and/or Scrapbook. Both would be perfect but even one would be great.
  • Several apps I use that have Firefox extensions are unable to create Chrome extensions, or so they claim. E.g., Ultra Recall, Surfulater, IQ. LastPass and Linkman have only limited functionality in Chrome. Now if it is the developers of those apps that are not creating extensions then I apologize, but most have commented specifically that there is no way they've found to get any or better functionality in Chrome.
Other than those - and a few other things I am sure I forgot at the moment - Chrome is kicking Firefox's butt IMO.

Jim
1047
Living Room / Re: Is a college education worth the money?
« Last post by J-Mac on June 06, 2010, 11:16 PM »
In my opinion, education is extremely important. But college isn't necessarily a good way to get an education.

Best comment of the thread so far, IMO!

Thanks!

Jim
1048
Living Room / Re: Is a college education worth the money?
« Last post by J-Mac on June 06, 2010, 01:25 AM »
I do not have a college degree though I did have several scholarships offered when I was in high school. I chose to enter the military at the time.

Since then I have attended college courses but stopped even trying to apply them toward a degree when specific curricula were forced on me; read: courses that offered me no possible benefit but were required for degree completion.

Since then I have taught college courses at two community colleges and two universities. Also when I was a director at a large utility in Florida I had more than 40 people directly reporting to me, and only two did not have degrees: me and my secretary.

Just sayin'... it sometimes works out just fine.  :)

Jim
1049
General Software Discussion / Re: Font managers reviews and opinions
« Last post by J-Mac on June 01, 2010, 12:15 AM »
Ohh and for serious font stuff, not that i do a lot of it, but i have Main Type from high logic, see the specials page for the discount!  ;)

I have Scanahand "Pro" but not the most recent version. They have since added Themida to their products. I don’t like installing anything with Themida. It basically puts a wrapper around their code, I guess as protection against reverse engineering. Problem is that Anti-Virus developers can't scan inside the wrapper. Naturally some of the virus authors have found they can plant their products inside Themida's wrapper and not be detected by AV software. Very controversial a few years ago. I don’t know if all that has ever been resolved but since new info is not easily found when searching I just make sure I don’t install anything that uses Themida.

Jim
1050
Living Room / Re: Does DRM Kill the End of a Movie??!?
« Last post by J-Mac on May 31, 2010, 10:17 PM »

If you are in the States may I suggest a Philips DVD player such as the DVP-5990? Less than $60 everywhere, has a USB port for photos and movie files (DivX and WMV), and entering a "magic code" on the remote makes the player region-free allowing you to play DVDs from around the world.

Here's that "magic code" that you mentioned. It works with Phillips players and several Sony players. Some folks claim it works on almost any player but I didn't have any others to test it.

DVD all-region hack
Phillips (and some Sony) DVD Player hack for any region.

You have to go to setup>preferences and press 138931 on your remote > press 'up' arrow to select '0' and hit setup again to exit and you can play any region dvd.

1. Don't put DVD in player.
2. Press "Setup" on remote.
3. Press ">" to "Preferences" menu. (If DVD is in player, the "Preferences" menu will be skipped over.)
4. At that screen enter 138931 on remote.
5. Region code screen is displayed. Press "^" to "0".
6. Press "Setup" on remote.
7. Press "OK" on remote.


 :)

Jim
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