Recent Posts

10726

Living Room / Re: new PC options:-

« Last post by tomos on August 02, 2007, 03:15 AM »

thanks lashiec
no, I grew up hanging out in video arcades playing asteroids & spaceinvaders (you can even play it here) -
that dates me I guess (do they still exist even, great games!) but I never got into computer gaming so no worries there..

I do a lot of photo editing also work with high resolution A4/A3 scans (very big file size) - still using old (5.5) photoshop which doesnt need lots of resources but I may upgrade at some stage. Then I use Freehand for vector drawing, again it's very easy on resources. Of course I often have Firefox open with sixty or so tabs open as well 

Also, be sure to have that case well cooled if you plan to go with the on-board video. I heard they heat quite a bit if you stress them.

-Lashiec

considering getting new fans anyway (want reasonable quiet), but will probably have a look inside first & see what the manual or website for mobo says about it
EDIT - if going for onboard video, do you think is it possible (in general) to later upgrade to a card?

Could you give us some insight over that PSU? 550W may be overkill for your system, although that's not my main concern but the quality of the components housed inside it. What's the price?

-Lashiec

unfortunately they dont give any more details about the PSU
even price I cant say -
they offer various machines for set prices & you can then "configure" them / upgrade parts
The basic AMD dualcore €299 PC comes with "500W Powerline Silent"
which you can upgrade to "550W LC-Power Silent" for €20 
EDIT- strange,
the €399 PC (similar but with graphics card) comes with a "430Watt Powerline Silent" ...

10727

Living Room / Re: Some laser printers are as danagerous as cigarette smoking...

« Last post by tomos on August 02, 2007, 02:41 AM »

nothing from brother included there, that could be good or bad..

someone was telling me they saw a programme on the tele here about it.
They were saying it was very bad to sleep in the same room as a laser printer -
presumably one that emits these dodgy particles..
..which made me wonder are they even dodgy if you dont use them much 

10728

Best Dialog Extender / Re: Consistent favourite folder access- wow- that was hard! Office->Directory Opus

« Last post by tomos on August 01, 2007, 01:18 PM »

filebox extender doesnt work with nero either BTW (for me anyway)

10729

Living Room / Re: Article: A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer

« Last post by tomos on August 01, 2007, 12:49 PM »

there is such a smiley, i've seen it.  anyone have a link?[/spoiler]

-Wordzilla (August 01, 2007, 12:45 PM)

Search!! 

https://www.donation...3/1Small/WHISTLE.GIF

-mouser (August 01, 2007, 12:41 PM)

oops didnt think of that

10730

Living Room / Re: Article: A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer

« Last post by tomos on August 01, 2007, 12:44 PM »

I'd get much better value for money building one.

just a warning: my experience has been that this is *not* the case.  i would highly recommend you try to build a pc for one and only one reason: because you enjoy the process.  My belief is that currently building your own will cost you more in parts, is MUCH more risky in terms of something going wrong, and puts you in a much more precarious situation should your computer need repair.

in summary: building a pc on your own can be fun -- but that's the only reason you should try it.

-mouser (August 01, 2007, 12:41 PM)

now I'm scared again

10731

Living Room / Re: Article: A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer

« Last post by tomos on August 01, 2007, 12:34 PM »

it does make it sound very non-threatening for, well, anyone who doesnt really know about these things  *
I'm looking at buying a new pc but guess I'd get much better value for money building one.
But then you hear the scare stories about this not being compatibleö with that & having to uninstal those drivers before you add the other...

* an aside about smileys  :)

second time today I'm looking for a different smiley.
I often looking for a whistling while looking innocent one.
Earlier I was looking for a - "[I need a scratch my head smiley here]"
  end of spoiler

10732

Living Room / Re: Article: A Woman's Primer for Building Her Own Computer

« Last post by tomos on August 01, 2007, 12:17 PM »

something for me to consider... 

10733

Living Room / Re: new PC options:-

« Last post by tomos on August 01, 2007, 08:38 AM »

well, I think I'll stay with this shop cause they're the cheapest I've seen & seem to use fairly good parts.

The intel one is €70 more expensive for equivalent (except FWIW intel is 2x2.0mhz, AMD is 2x2.3)
I've been chugging away on less than half that for years so think I'll be happy with AMD

so think I'll go like this

Prozessor: AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual-Core-Prozessor 4400+ (2x 2.3Ghz) AM2 Arbeitsspeicher: 2048 MB (2x 1024MB) Dual-Channel-DDR2-Speicher mit 800Mhz (PC6400) Festplatte: 320GB SATA-II 7.200U/Min 16MB Cache Grafikkarte: 256MB ATI Radeon X1250 Onboard Laufwerke: 18x DVD-R/+R/RW Duall.Brenner Mainboard: K9AGM2-FIH (AMD 690V/HDMI) _could well go for basic one_would be minus €20 Gehäuse: Midi-Tower Blacktower Black Netzteil: 550W Netzteil LC-Power Silent Diskettenlaufwerk / Card-Reader: 7in1 Card-Reader mit Diskettenlaufwerk Kombo Zubehoer: 56k PCI Modem V.92 Servicepaket: 3-Jahre Gewährleistung - 48Std. Pick UP & Return Service

for €507 (+ delivery)
add  65 for a second 320GB drive, I have a copy of XP, a good DVD burner which I could add as well
€580 roughly - I think it's okay
It's from http://www.neobuy.de based on their €299PC - if anyone has any better suggestions I'm all ears

10734

Living Room / Re: new PC options:-

« Last post by tomos on August 01, 2007, 07:30 AM »

Any reason you're going for AMD64 instead of core2duo? price? . Anyway, if you do go for AMD64, be sure to get a motherboard with socket AM2.

-f0dder (August 01, 2007, 06:23 AM)

thanks f0dder!
yeah,
the mobos are all with sata & with socket AM2.
The AMD64 computers are a good bit cheaper!

Personally I'd go with an nvidia based card instead of ATi, I've had bad experience with ATi drivers... I'm currently running a passively cooled GF7600, and it works just fine.

re nvidia, they are only offering:
512MB Nvidia Geforce 8500GT (Geräuschlose Kühlung) PCI-E, which is i think a lot more than I need -
I was even considering just getting 256MB ATI Radeon X1250 Onboard with the basic motherboard..
They offer the ATI onboard with the basic (#1) or the HDMI motherboard (#3 above)

(although it could come in handy if your graphics card blows up).

a) there's basically two versions of DVI, single- and dual-link. You need dual-link if you want to run insane resolutions. Two outputs are normal for any recent graphics cards. Also, if you only have analog monitors (regular VGA/D-SUB), don't despair, cheap dvi->vga exist, and most cards today come with at least one.

-f0dder (August 01, 2007, 06:23 AM)

monitor i was interested in has DVI-D (dual link) - reviews say picture better with the DVI connection -
Graphics card site says:

Two integrated DVI display outputs * Primary supports 18-, 24-, and 30-bit digital displays at all resolutions up to 1920x1200 (single-link DVI) or 2560x1600 (dual-link DVI)1

a pdf comparing their cards says
"supports DVI-I to HDMI adapter" [I need a scratch my head smiley here]
not fully clear will they connect...but I'm not overly worried about it either way

As I say though I'm not even sure about graphics card..
if DVI connection didnt work out I might just go with the onboard graphics option....
Contacting AMD as I write (they have a very sluggish website  ) for more details

10735

Living Room / new PC options:-

« Last post by tomos on August 01, 2007, 04:38 AM »

hi y'all!
I'm planning on getting a new computer from a site where you choose a computer & can then configure your requirements from a fairly limited choice..
[I've been keeping an eye on jammo's thread about building a PC & picked up a few tips there already]
There's a few optons I'm not sure about.. relevant & possibly irrelevant specifications at the end - it's a bit uneven so if you wantmore info i try find out - sometimes the site isn't that clear with info etc.

a) I've been looking at a flatscreen monitor with D-Sub & DVI connections.
The Graphics card below has "DVI dual link: 2"
I have no idea but presume thats directly accessible for the monitor - or does that connection have to be routed through the mainboard somehow?

b) Was wondering with mobo #3 (from newegg comments-No DVI output or Component output but the HDMI should be enough") would it be helpful in any way for simply desktop/graphics use as opposed to multimedia - or would it just be recommended for multimedia/TV etc.

c) I was thinking of possibly getting it with no hard drives & adding two myself - I'd have more control & probably get better value for mah money that way but I'm afraid of "technical difficulties" - could anyone rate that, keeping in mind all I've ever done inside a computer is to change a DVD burner - that was scary enough but nice when it worked!

GRAPHIC CARD 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2400XT    * DVI dual link: 2    * Video-out    * TV-out    * HDTV 720p/1080i    * HDTV / /720p/1080p    * HDCP    * Cooling: Passiv    * Format: PCI-E x16    * Energy: 50Watt

MOTHERBOARDs

1) Gigabyte MA69VM-S2 http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16813128043 Customer comments: (reasonably good reviews) http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16813128043 - Only downside is that the ATI RAID 1 runs slower than others, its based on Promise.

Other Possible Motherboards:-

2) MSI K9N4 UltraF (Nforce500 Ultra Chipsatz) http://www.newegg.co...=MSI%2bK9N4%2bUltraF Customer comments: (very mixed reviews) http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16813130063 - i got this and a AMD x2 3800+ 2.2 g CPU with 1gb of ram and a msi nx7600gs 512mb video card. there is pretty much NO SOUND from my case - Cons: no Video Output. - Great chip, runs cool and great for entry into the Am2 socket - poor cooling on chipset.

3) MSI K9AGM2-FIH (AMD 690V/HDMI Chipsatz) (additional 20€ charge) *  Back Panel I/O Ports include: - 1 x HDMI port - 1 x Graphics Card port think this from newegg the same:- MSI K9AGM2-FIH Socket AM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16813130091 Customer comments: (generally good reviews) http://www.newegg.co...Item=N82E16813130091 - This is a good board for those looking for a HTPC board with firewire. No DVI output or Component output but the HDMI should be enough. - Spend a few bucks to replace the noisy cooling fans came with the case, then you are all set with your HTPC

any opinions greatly appreciated - thanks,
tom

10736

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by tomos on July 31, 2007, 04:51 PM »

But I’m a bit sick of having to import my stuff into different databases (and loosing formating and other usefull tweakings in the process) to be able to use the organizing power of some software. That's the main reason why I never really bought into any of the Ultra Recall, myBase, etc. solutions... And even EverNote, to some extent, since I only keep around 40-50 notes max in there, for very practical reason (at some point, I had 800 notes in there — which, I’m sure, is much less than other EverNote’s users — and it literally became a nightmare; I really *hated* to work with such a a big amount of “pseudo classified” notes

-Armando (July 31, 2007, 12:21 PM)

in evernote,
without very many notes, I find the scroll already becoming a bit of a pain
(I'll be polite & say "in the wrist" - all that scrolling) -
I miss being able to look in the tree & being able to see the note titles & pick the relevant one

you still miss tagging though? in general I mean - not necessarily evernote's in particular..

10737

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: ESTsoft Releases ALZip v7.0 Beta with New Speed Extractor Options

« Last post by tomos on July 31, 2007, 10:53 AM »

on the other hand,
me,
I'm always happy with not having to double click - mightn't be a big deal to a lot of people but I'm forced to use the mouse with my work & I had some programme at some stage that counted my mouse clicks - if I remember right it averaged round the 4,000 mark per day.
It really bugs me when you have to double click things in the tray, in fact I don't double click anything any more - I click and press Return instead.

So, in praise of single clicking 

also havent tried it yet but it does sound good:
-

Renegade: may i make a suggestion regarding that? There's a basic problem with it. As i never know how the inside of the archive is before i open it, i'd never use the "extract here on double click" function, which is the most interesting feature.
BUT, if there was some safety about it, like "if there's more than one file on the base dir, extract to here/ArchiveName", oh man that'd be perfect cheesy

That's already in there — the options are always paired like this:

1) FOLDER
2) FOLDER / ARCHIVE FILE NAME

So you can set the extraction to something like:

Desktop
Desktop/Filename

To extract to the desktop or to a named folder on the desktop. Of course you can also set your own custom folder as well. So the folder pairs would then be:

Some User Folder
Some User Folder/Filename

When you have ALZip configured to extract files immediately, if a folder already exists, then ALZip simply creates a new one like "filename(1)" or "filename(2)"... That's so that you don't get prompted with an overwrite message. The whole thing is supposed to be able speed after all!

-Renegade (July 27, 2007, 10:15 PM)

10738

Post New Requests Here / Re: Idea: Multiple Start menus

« Last post by tomos on July 30, 2007, 07:38 PM »

have you looked at VistaStartMenu - it doesnt do exactly what you want - well maybe, but not in just one step - but it is very keyboard friendly

http://www.vistastar...tures.html#interface

10739

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by tomos on July 30, 2007, 12:35 PM »

Zoot's organization features are so powerful, no other program offers it.  It's automatic rules, filtering, categorizing, etc is really great (I would liken it to a really powerful email filtering system).  Evernote is doing a decent job in this area, but once Zoot is finished in the 32-bit version, Evernote will just be eye-candy.

-superboyac (July 30, 2007, 11:50 AM)

sounds great, expensive though, innit?! ($99)

10740

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by tomos on July 30, 2007, 12:33 PM »

I'm starting to like evernote

In a way it is a path i am on which relies less on my having to impose structure, and more on tag and search.

-iphigenie (July 28, 2007, 10:17 AM)

I'm finally getting into using evernote properly, I like it a lot too but find the lack of shortcuts WRT categories a bit of a pain - maybe it's especially at the beginning when you need to continually set up new categories & maybe modify keywords for older ones etc. and it's all mouse clicking...
BTW - do you know:
is there a way to get it to ignore a keyword if it is only part of another word - eg keyword monitor brings up monitoring which i dont want ?

10741

General Software Discussion / Re: Favorite ZIP/RAR application?

« Last post by tomos on July 30, 2007, 12:13 PM »

that's really great! thanks Renegade 

10742

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)

« Last post by tomos on July 30, 2007, 11:52 AM »

And except for defragging the OS drive, I maintain my XP machine the same way, as far as cleaning crap goes.

-app103 (July 30, 2007, 11:39 AM)

App, just to clarify
- you are saying that defragging XP-drive/partition is helpful ?

10743

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by tomos on July 28, 2007, 05:39 PM »

& the comparision chart
http://www.searchinf...orm-desktop-buy.html

Functions: Free/Standard/Professional/Trial

10744

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by tomos on July 28, 2007, 05:31 PM »

Anybody uses  SearchInform and would like to comment?

http://www.searchinform.com/index.html

Looks like a nice Desktop Search software.

-Armando (July 28, 2007, 05:08 PM)

SearchInform features (just having a look...)

10745

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Create a containing folder by right clicking on a file

« Last post by tomos on July 28, 2007, 12:17 PM »

use this reply as opposed to "quick reply"

alternatively,
if you start in Quick Reply, click on Preview - that will bring you into "full" mode

10746

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Free computer help online (tune-ups, customization, etc)

« Last post by tomos on July 27, 2007, 02:12 PM »

I was told if you dont do any cleaning (of houses) for 5 yrs things get no worse, a worthwhile research project i think, wonder if this holds for computers? 

-Grorgy (July 27, 2007, 12:42 PM)

hey Grorgy at what stage do houses get no worse -
does it take the full 5 years before they stabilise?! 

I dont really want to, but I seem to be going down the road of testing out your theory -
no - not really that bad but boy does the dirt build up after a couple of weeks 

@Brandon - you keep bringing out new updates before I get a chance to try it out ...

10747

General Software Discussion / Re: Serif DrawPlus 50% Off

« Last post by tomos on July 27, 2007, 04:48 AM »

didnt find the serif website particularly helpful or imformative (!),
here's part of a review from
http://www.pcplus.co...ons/serif_drawplus_8

PDF performance No self-respecting graphics or DTP program can move up a version these days without being able to produce, and ideally import, PDF files. Here, you can import a PDF file and publish any drawing directly in the same format. We successfully opened a complex test file, with multi-coloured vector elements and text in several fonts, and produced a fully-editable DrawPlus document. Similarly, we took a test page and published it as a PDF file that Adobe Reader 7 had no trouble in displaying. As well as producing PDF files, DrawPlus is a good candidate for knocking up all kinds of buttons and hotspot objects for web pages. As well as accessing a wide range of pre-drawn shapes and vector clips, available from the Gallery palette, you can create your own objects out of basic shapes, fills, text and bitmaps, then add a rollover mask using the Image Slice tool. You can define different graphics for the various standard rollover states, then export the objects to your web page. There are many other more minor improvements to DrawPlus’s feature set, such as the enhanced handling of colour. You can now adjust colours in CMYK, RGB or either of two HSL models. Direct AutoCAD import is also provided, including support for the 2006 version, and selection of individual objects within a group is easily achieved by pressing the [CTRL] key. What DrawPlus does, it does very well, and the redesigned interface makes it much easier to get at tools and apply effects. The brush and texture tools are useful additions to the program, but are little more than catch-up in comparison with the major players in the market. DrawPlus 8 isn’t going to give Corel or Adobe any sleepless nights, but in its target market – at well under £100 – it’s still a versatile drawing program that is quick and easy to use. Simon Williams                PC Plus Issue 242 - May 2006

10748

General Software Discussion / Re: Serif DrawPlus 50% Off

« Last post by tomos on July 27, 2007, 04:41 AM »

bummer,
you're not allowed try it out ..
anyone experienced?!

10749

Living Room / Re: Tip: Don't Just Keep a backup of your latest files

« Last post by tomos on July 26, 2007, 02:17 PM »

https://www.donation...32.msg68567#msg68567
for a couple of links for Acronis deals
also if you google Acronis true image I think you'll find a couple different places offering version 7 for free

Here's one I came across -
Acronis True Image 10 Home for $29 instead of $50
http://www.ugr.com/TrueImage.html

Anyone bought from them?
Says something about user groups http://www.ugr.com/index.html - maybe you have to join as you buy?? - I got the link from Windows secrets newsletter I believe..

10750

Living Room / Re: Why I haven't made a donation to DonationCoder.com -- and why I might later?

« Last post by tomos on July 26, 2007, 04:58 AM »

re the visitor status thingy:

I think once people join the forum they should be simply called, for example, "forum member". (i.e. no visitor status at all)

I think one of the main reasons to donate (as mouser says) is for the software or in order to have credits to give to others (for tips, recommendations, reviews, etc. & is esp. handy for people like me who need help at times!

I've always felt re the forum that anyone who participates is already contributing in a very positive way - to the site at any rate - I mean if the forums were dead I suspect the whole thing wouldn't work so well..)

From the point of view of encouraging donations, I don't think the visitor status makes anyone donate (but who am i to know ) & I guess my point is I suppose that I think it's an unfair title as such.