Recent Posts

1101

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Sagelight Image Editor - pay what you want promo (Apil 2010)

« Last post by J-Mac on April 17, 2010, 12:11 PM »

1: Agreed, a thread split is probably advisable. Incidentally I did take advantage of the "pay what you want" sale - $20 - mostly on the basis of how nice and informative the dev is.

-JavaJones (April 16, 2010, 01:30 PM)

Me too! Of course, I also purchased Helicon Filter when it was on BDJ 

-Darwin (April 16, 2010, 02:35 PM)

Wow - I am SO surprised!  (Kidding! You know you're my software hero!)   

Jim

1102

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Database Oasis for $21 on Bits duJour Wed, 4/14/2010

« Last post by J-Mac on April 16, 2010, 12:40 PM »

I took a look at it.  I respect their design philosophy (create a simple database app for home users), and I think they succeed on that count.  I am looking for something along those lines, myself, but the two things which were deal breakers for me: you can't compile each Display (database) into a stand-alone which runs without starting the Database Oasis front-end itself, and the field (as well as query) options were too limited for my purposes.  

-gpetrant (April 16, 2010, 11:47 AM)

I agree that it is a decent effort by the developer, and I wasn’t really trying to trash the app - just express that I was somewhat disappointed. The inability to compile each display doesn’t really bother me that much.

There seems to be a veritable dearth of database apps which achieve the happy medium I'm looking for: inexpensive, easy to use, yet sophisticated enough to do everything a home/small business user could want.

Sounds like we are looking for very similar programs.

Database Oasis is well on its way toward that goal, imo, and I hope they continue development.  

I am also hopeful; after all I have it now so if it improves that will certainly make me happy!

What did you like, and what didn't you like, about Database Oasis, J-Mac?

First, the UI doesn’t seem to work to well on my computer here. The text is overly large and therefore a lot of it is cut off at the end of each line. Also, in most cases the bottom ~10% of all text is cut off. See the screen caps below.

[attachthumb=#1][/attachthumb]

[attachthumb=#2][/attachthumb]

I haven't yet spent much time with the program but the time I did spend wasn’t very good - of course I have only been through the Quick Start documentation; I will also read the user manual - or at least the parts pertinent to what I want to do; the manual is a 298 page PDF document! I will say that the documentation isn't that bad. A CHM Help file plus the Quick Start and Full User manual (both PDF) can be opened from the Help menu. A lot of apps I have picked up lately have no Help docs at all and the Help menu opens your browser to their web page; not so with DB Oasis to their credit.

Anyway I opened a few different Displays and entered some sample data just to get the feel of it. However the next time I open those same displays I cannot find the data I entered. Supposedly when you open a Display with data in it the first entry you made is showing in the display screen; mine is always empty. I tried using Data>Find but it finds no entries. Likewise the Data>Setup List View creates whatever list I configure but there is no data to show. Yet each Display where I entered sample data shows in the Display's Title bar, e.g., Medical Records Display shows "Medical Records: 1 of 1) on its title bar but there is no data showing and none to be found. The only thing I can guess is that I did not enter data for every single field in the display, but I would hope that doesn’t prevent any data at all from showing.

Anyway I guess that the combination of the broken text display and the inability to show the data I entered got me a bit disinterested in it. I did spend a few hours with it trying to resolve the issues I am seeing, but after a few hours I grow weary of troubleshooting a brand-spanking new program! I kinda like 'em to work OK out of the box and then at least let ME break them!!  

Thanks!

Jim

1103

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Database Oasis for $21 on Bits duJour Wed, 4/14/2010

« Last post by J-Mac on April 16, 2010, 01:31 AM »

Well this certainly didn't generate much interest here!

Just FYI: I did finally go ahead and purchase Database Oasis....  and it ain't all that.   

So I still am seeking the fairly simple but usable database app!  (Anyone wanna buy a very, very slightly used Database Oasis?)

Thanks!

Jim

1104

Living Room / Re: Which prize would you choose?

« Last post by J-Mac on April 16, 2010, 01:10 AM »

I wouldn’t choose either. IME such contests are usually designed to get something from me to you and not the other way around. I just ignore all contests, sweepstakes, etc.

Thank you.

Jim

1105

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 - Hidden Tool

« Last post by J-Mac on April 14, 2010, 03:34 PM »

OK, what has you so mischievously merry Josh?? 

Jim

1106

Found Deals and Discounts / Database Oasis for $21 on Bits duJour Wed, 4/14/2010

« Last post by J-Mac on April 14, 2010, 02:33 AM »

A "point-and-click" database program is how it's billed. Looks pretty nice, especially to me. I was pretty decent using dBase III+ way back but I have given up on Microsoft Access several times. Every time I want to do anything in Access that VB Editor window opens and it all kinda falls apart - all downhill from there!

If anyone has used or is using Database Oasis please let me know what you think of it. I am considering giving it a try but I respect the views of my DC friends here and would really like some info from people who know the product.

Thanks!

Jim

1107

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite launch bar? Your favorite features? Missing Features?

« Last post by J-Mac on April 09, 2010, 03:20 PM »

But I guess the question is... does it do that now?  And if it doesn't, was that a mistake?  Or do you call something adware even after it doesn't do it?  That's my point... perhaps they made a mistake, honest or not... does that classify things as adware even after it's rectified?

-wraith808 (April 09, 2010, 01:15 PM)

I don’t know that it is rectified, and how would you suggest I find out? Install again? Would you do that with any other software? I doubt it. I won't.

Jim

1108

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite launch bar? Your favorite features? Missing Features?

« Last post by J-Mac on April 09, 2010, 12:59 PM »

wraith808,

I see. The reason I call it adware is because of how it behaved on my system. I don’t have a specific problem with Impulse otherwise, at least not as an engine to distribute their software. Stardock Central was always a help to me. But after not having any Stardock apps on Win7 I installed Fences from either PC Magazine or PC World - can't remember which one - and it didn't mention Stardock at all until after I had installed it. For some reason Stardock distributed Fences in a totally different way than I had ever seem with its other apps. It appeared to be wholly stand-alone; no other Stardock association required. After I realized it was from Stardock I figured things might change after it came out of beta.

But then after using it for a few months I got a notice saying I could not use it anymore because it had expired, though the About dialog claimed that it did not expire for another month or two. I thought it was a mistake (and Stardock does claim that the early beta expiration was a pure mistake; a bug in the installer package). Anyway it showed a link and said to download and install a newly released beta build. OK - so I did. But the installation took a long time and while it was running I could see it was installing a heck of a lot of DLLs, etc. Then Impulse auto-opened after the installation. Surprise! OK, so that was just the stealth installation.

What bothered me more though was that I wasn’t using any other Stardock apps at the time. Zero. And Fences ran at startup as it is a desktop shortcut organizer. Yet Impulse was also placed into my startup config - again, silently - to run in the background. Since I did not have any Stardock apps installed other than Fences, I guess that Impulse just had to find a reason to pop-up and show me something every now and then. And all it did was to show me Stardock's games and urge me to download and try one or another. Nothing else, nothing telling me any news about Fences. Just little nags, roughly daily, to download and try their games. I didn't like that even a little bit.

Anyway that is basically why I call it what I call it. Impulse was downloaded and installed without my knowledge, inserted itself into my startup config, and popped up regularly and tried to convince me to download and install their PC games. Any other program that does this is usually called adware. At least by me. Of course anyone with a Stardock subscription would also get notifications about available updates to their Stardock apps and would not see that as out of the ordinary. But for those who had just installed Fences from another site this looks like something else...

Thanks.

Jim

1109

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite launch bar? Your favorite features? Missing Features?

« Last post by J-Mac on April 09, 2010, 11:05 AM »

wraith808: I don’t have a problem with people still loving Stardock's stuff. I was a regular subscriber for a heck of a lot of years - since back in the late 1990s. Installed most every beta, borked more OS's than I care to remember! I don’t use it now mostly because OS's have the ability to customizable them fairly well plus I am not nearly as interested in skinning as I once was...  though that was always a definite plus for me in the past!

And as for ObjectDock Plus I really just stopped using that when I decided to go with FARR and LaunchBar Commander because they are easy to setup and very light on resources. (I say FARR is easy to setup and use because I use it primarily for program launching; mouser knows I get into fits trying to do much else with it!        ).

And I hate to be contrary but I must disagree with you on Impulse. Yes, Impulse did replace the Stardock Central (SDC) engine, which was a similar software distribution engine but with much less platform requirements. I was fine with SDC; it had its crashing moments but generally it did a decent job of notifying you of updates to all your subscribed products, plus it would alert you about beta releases if you wanted. Better yet it archived every build installed so if you decided that you didn't like a given new build you could drop back almost instantly. Also it would reinstall all your Stardock products if you reinstalled your OS or otherwise needed to recover your installations. I imagine that Impulse performs the same or similar tasks, but it is massively huge, requires IE 7 or 8 (a good thing IMO but many were upset by that) and it also requires the .NET framework, which as you can see here in DC is a big no-no for many.

And it most definitely did not warn users of Fences that it would be installed. Here's a reference for that from Wikipedia:

Fences 0.99 controversy

Stardock attracted criticism in September 2009 when the latest release of one of its products - desktop organizer Fences - was bundled with Impulse without mentioning this on the product description or download page. Fences had been available as a stand-alone product until that time, whereas version 0.99 was made available only with bundled Impulse and considerable additional software requirements (Internet Explorer 7 and Microsoft .NET Framework), but neither of these facts was mentioned in the product description or download page for Fences, so that users would only be notified during installation. In response to criticism on its forum, Stardock added a statement informing customers of the additional software bundling and requirements on the Fences website.

  (Emphasis/italics added by J-Mac)

Now I don’t know if Impulse is still required at this point since I haven't tried it again, but it was when I did have Fences installed. Also, ObjectDock Plus did not require Impulse a year or so ago but I was told on the forum that it would be for the next version. So I doubt I will install it again.

Thank you.

Jim

1110

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: O&O DiskStat 2 Pro (Easter promo)

« Last post by J-Mac on April 08, 2010, 11:04 PM »

Me too, though I admit I have been purging a lot of stuff from there lately. I mean, after all some of the apps won't run on any OS past Win 98SE!

Jim

-J-Mac (April 08, 2010, 09:38 PM)

  I've got folders for Win 3.x apps and for DOS 5 and 6 programs in that directory. Neither of them are more than about 5 MB in size, though... Amazing!

-Darwin (April 08, 2010, 10:57 PM)

What are you saving them for? The price to rise on Ebay??   

Jim

1111

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite launch bar? Your favorite features? Missing Features?

« Last post by J-Mac on April 08, 2010, 11:02 PM »

I have had a license for ObjectDock Plus for years but it stopped development and I'm pretty sure the new version that does eventually come out will be associated with Stardock's Impulse engine, meaning you will have to install that in order to use ObjectDock.

-J-Mac (April 08, 2010, 01:04 PM)

Guess ObjectDock Plus development has started back up. I noticed on their web site that v2.0 is in beta. I have to agree with you, though. Impulse re-installing itself behind your back is rather shady behavior.

-Innuendo (April 08, 2010, 10:14 PM)

2.0 has been in beta for over a year now. Impulse always said that an update was available - the 2.0 beta - but the download page was always a 404 error page instead.

Also I believe that Stardock now states that Impulse will be installed when you install any other Stardock app. They got a ton of heat of the stealth downloads/installs.

Jim

1112

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: O&O DiskStat 2 Pro (Easter promo)

« Last post by J-Mac on April 08, 2010, 09:38 PM »

Me too, though I admit I have been purging a lot of stuff from there lately. I mean, after all some of the apps won't run on any OS past Win 98SE!

Jim

1113

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite launch bar? Your favorite features? Missing Features?

« Last post by J-Mac on April 08, 2010, 09:34 PM »

Impulse isn't all that bad to me.  It's not something I keep running all the time, but I'd not go the route of saying it's adware...

-wraith808 (April 08, 2010, 03:57 PM)

At first I didn't call it that but after a while it seemed to be strongly pushing their games, which I don’t use. After my last Object Desktop subscription ran out a few months ago I didn't renew, but I still used ObjectDock Plus (since I purchased that outright about five years ago) and Fences. However when Fences required an update it automatically - and silently - reinstalled Impulse. Didn't mention it to me at all. And every now and then it would pop up after a reboot and since I wasn’t using any of the apps in it all I would see were invitations to download their PC games. I didn't ask for Impulse then, I never actively started it up, it was never in my startup config...  Maybe I just use different terminology than you but I call that adware.

Thank you.

Jim

1114

Living Room / Re: How do *you* tell when your OS is booted/ready?

« Last post by J-Mac on April 08, 2010, 01:53 PM »

I use Chameleon Startup Manager Pro to mange my startup items. The tray icon shows me that programs are starting and one-click on the icon shows me which apps will start and a what exact time. All are scheduled to occur within a few minutes. I wait until all of those are started before I consider my computer "ready-to-go".

Jim

1115

Living Room / Re: File Size vs. Size on Disk: Why such a difference?

« Last post by J-Mac on April 08, 2010, 01:22 PM »

I always wondered the same thing as the original post and finally learned it here - like most of my computer education. Anyway I looked at very small files on my internal drives and also on a 1 TB external USB drive: all have "Size on Disk" of 4.00 kb, so I guess that means everything on my system is currently formatted with a cluster size of 4096 bytes. (All NTFS).

Thank you.

Jim

1116

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: O&O DiskStat 2 Pro (Easter promo)

« Last post by J-Mac on April 08, 2010, 01:13 PM »

The point is, as I understand it .. you cannot be sure of removing the earlier Nets.  Unpredicatable results will occur, you cannot trust if a program designed for 1.5 will work under 3.0 etc.   If this is wrong, share away.

-Steven Avery (April 06, 2010, 03:10 PM)

Ah - I see your point. It is adviseable to have ALL versions of .net installed lest some application or another insist on it... I dunno, my harddrive - even on my notebook - is vast and I don't sweat that anymore, either... Though I do like to run my computer with (relatively) few applications installed these days.

-Darwin (April 06, 2010, 04:02 PM)

Now I know that you are a software junkie, as I am, and so you must also have the same sort of "Program Setup Files" directory stored somewhere on your system where you keep all your licensed software installation files, installed and not-installed. (Mine is currently... <blush> 17.7 GB....  and that's down from 22 GB; I zipped up some larger ones and burned them to DVD!)

Jim

1117

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite launch bar? Your favorite features? Missing Features?

« Last post by J-Mac on April 08, 2010, 01:04 PM »

Wow - long thread! I didn't want to read all through it - again, as I am sure I read this earlier.

I don’t know if FARR counts for this but that is how I launch my programs most often. Next most often used is LaunchBar Commander. And no, I'm not trying to butter up mouser!

I have had a license for ObjectDock Plus for years but it stopped development and I'm pretty sure the new version that does eventually come out will be associated with Stardock's Impulse engine, meaning you will have to install that in order to use ObjectDock. I had that installed for a year and frankly I don’t like it. Intrusive adware IMO, though I know Brad would beg to differ.

Jim

1118

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

« Last post by J-Mac on April 07, 2010, 09:37 PM »

Dormouse. I was just kidding you. Look at the sentence I was talking about - I know what you meant but to anyone not reading through the thread it probably looks bewildering! No better way you could have put it though.

Personally I'm not using RAW images - like I mentioned I don’t get to take many meaningful shots anymore and mostly work with older photos; though that presents its own challenges. Have you ever tried to digitize and them repair/optimize old, old tin and silver pics?

Thanks!

Jim

1119

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

« Last post by J-Mac on April 07, 2010, 11:45 AM »

PM allows you to add tags to the photo itself as well as to a sidecar

-Dormouse (April 06, 2010, 05:16 PM)

Is one of these preferable?

-tomos (April 07, 2010, 03:36 AM)

Now that's a question. Much debate on the issue. It's generally felt that sidecars are safer, but it really all depends. And what it depends on may be something you don't know because it is in the future.

There's a sticky thread on this issue in the IDI forums.

-Dormouse (April 07, 2010, 09:25 AM)

Dormouse, I am accustomed to clear and concise answers from you - and now this "...riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." (To quote Churchill).      

Jim

1120

N.A.N.Y. 2008 / Re: DonationCoder Search Deskbar v1.0.43

« Last post by J-Mac on April 06, 2010, 02:24 PM »

Anyone try it yet on Windows 7?

Thanks!

Jim

1121

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

« Last post by J-Mac on April 06, 2010, 01:14 PM »

I have to go the Support route with IDimager Pro - too much $$ invested to just drop it now, though that is still a strong possibility.

IDimager Pro - if I ever get it to work here - is only an organizing solution; I still need to get a good photo editor installed again. I was using Paint Shop Pro X for that - I feel that is the best editor around for the money and also for the ease of use. The Adobe products are way more than I need and they are also appropriately complex. Long learning curve IIRC. I don’t shoot RAW images; don’t work with RAW images at all. I cannot get out and about very much unfortunately so most - virtually all - of my image work is from existing photos. A lot of them are mine but a lot more are from various family members' photo albums. I am apparently the official family history researcher and chronicler for my near and extended family and it is a big help to have access to old family photos from all branches of my family. So I beg, borrow - but not steal! - old family photo albums from family members all over and add them to the master tree as appropriate. Now, having more than 20,000 such photos, tight organization is a must! I notice that most of the heavy users of IDimager advise using fairly standardized but extremely detailed categories and keywords. An example suggested to me at their forum was:

Religion
----Religious Buildings
----------Churches & Cathedrals
----------Mosques
----------Temples
----Religious Books
----------Bible
----------Koran

BTW, none of those are my categories; just the "sample" example suggested to me for Category Label Hierarchy in general. But I really don’t need nor want that level of detail. I'll be very satisfied with labeling all photos with the family branch, generation, name, date...  That sort of organization. Currently I use folders for categorization and I did have all labeled in ACDSee, but ACDSee stopped working on Windows 7 shortly after installing it after I upgraded from XP Pro unfortunately. And categorization by folder gets tougher and tougher as you get into the tens of thousands of photos! So I need a decent image organizer and I still need a damn good image editor - lots of very old photos that often need to be optimized to varying degrees.

But IDimager has very little in the way of photo editing; it is not developed as an image editor. I was going to upgrade my Paint Shop Pro to the latest version but I discovered that their "Piracy Protection" spyware-like service it installs has been tightened up and previous hacks to disable the service and keep the program itself working are no longer working. So I continue my search!

Thanks for reading all my whining crap, if you're still here!  

Jim

1122

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

« Last post by J-Mac on April 05, 2010, 01:30 PM »

BTW, I forgot to mention that I have also been using the free Faststone Viewer for viewing photos and even some light editing - it's quick, looks very nice, and hasn’t done anything to piss me off yet!!   

Thanks!

Jim

1123

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

« Last post by J-Mac on April 05, 2010, 01:27 PM »

Well, I'm quite pleased with my cursory use of PSP Pro X3's organizer. Once I got the hang of setting up Smart Collections, it works really well. Time will tell, of course...

exifPro (with regret) and PhotoCollector (no regret) have both been banished from my computer once again. If PhotoCollector ever gets an update, and the bugs/functionality issues are addressed, I may revisit either or both of them. FWIW, I love exifPro's Viewer. PhotoCollector's viewer is a close second.

-Darwin (April 05, 2010, 10:21 AM)

Hey there stranger! I used PSP from V.6 or 7 through PSPX until I installed Windows 7 - I have since heard that PSPX works on Win7 so I might reinstall it - but I didn't use PSP's organizer component. That used to be a separate program; think it was Paint Shop Photo Album. It was really bad. Took forever to catalog the images and then took forever every time you wanted to find or retrieve any images. No one generally liked it at all on the PSP Usenet group - lots of long-time PSP users there.

ACDSee was great from V.6 through the 2009 release. Then it wouldn’t run on Win7, though it was listed as compatible on the Microsoft Win7 Compatibility site. Works OK on some machines but on most it slowly stops working. Something about not using the Win7 Libraries correctly and it eventually mucks everything up. ACDSee won't fix it but says to just wait for the next version. Bleh.

I could have purchased PSP Pro X3 pretty cheap but was concerned about that spyware/anti-pirating service it installs. Not that I planned to pirate it but I just hate that stuff running on my PC because Corel wants to make sure I don’t pirate it. Used to be able to disable it on PSPX but I discovered that the same hacks don’t work on the X3 version.

IDimager Pro would be OK for me but apparently it doesn’t agree with something about my computer - haven't figured out what that is yet.

SuperboyAC has the right idea: you need more than one app to properly organize your images, if you have a lot. Most I found use something like ExifPro or similar apps for general quick organizing and viewing and then use IDimager Pro for their serious catalog work. Of course I don’t think I need quite that serious of cataloging! So why am I here??  Arrgghhh!!!  Magoo, you're done it again.

Jim

1124

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

« Last post by J-Mac on April 04, 2010, 10:10 PM »

There's one way to potentially find out if it's graphics card related. Go to the settings for your graphics card driver and set acceleration to None. If it still happens, it's probably not related to your card or drivers.

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (April 04, 2010, 04:40 PM)

Did that - it's set to None right now. Didn't help unfortunately. I think it's the program.

Thank you.

Jim

1125

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

« Last post by J-Mac on April 04, 2010, 01:21 PM »

I haven't seen huge amounts of discussion about nVidia cards in the IDI forums, but I did see this post (quite old now).

-Dormouse (April 04, 2010, 12:54 PM)

Thanks Dormouse.

That post appears to advise about settings in the Nvidia control panel that might improve Idimager's performance. Doesn’t mention any problems in IDimager though.

Jim