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1151

Living Room / Re: First compelling reason to switch to Windows 7

« Last post by J-Mac on March 17, 2010, 02:01 PM »

Thanks Oshyan.

I was basing my post partly on two recent articles in Windows Secrets, one by Michael Lasky in January and the other by Gizmo Richards in November 2009. I know that many despise Windows Secrets but, hey - it's a subscription I have and they do have some decent folks writing for them as long as you can get around all the ads!

I didn't find any right away that said that most software runs well on 64-bit though as usual it is more common to find articles about problems than no problems! Since this box is just about four years old now I was planning to either buy a new one sometime in the coming year or possibly rebuild this one. My current computer's case is so damn large that even I can strip out the guts and replace them with new. I will say that other than the 32 vs. 64-bit issue this machine was built to last with for the most part all top-notch components. And they're all regular retail components, meaning that they are not specially manufactured for Falcon-NW like Dell and HP components. The computer is still pretty much up-to-date; no components had to be replaced to accommodate Windows 7 after four years. The case is a Silverstone Icon Aluminum with a large side window and interior lighting, 24" deep, 20" high, and 8 " wide - I think I could crawl into it and hide if needed! Actually though it has been a breeze to swap out HDDs, the graphics card, memory, etc. without removing any interferences.

Thanks!

Jim

1152

General Software Discussion / Re: real dimensions

« Last post by J-Mac on March 17, 2010, 12:39 PM »

Thanks. I didn't realize it was portable. I just saw these things on their site:

JR Screen Ruler (For Windows 95/98/2000/NT/ME/XP)

Copyright © 2000-2005 Spadix Software.

....and figured that the code hasn’t been touched since 2005, before Win7 was available to developers.

Thanks!

Jim

1153

Living Room / Re: First compelling reason to switch to Windows 7

« Last post by J-Mac on March 17, 2010, 12:34 PM »

Thanks all.

@Carol:  First, this isn't new computer; it's a Falcon NW Mach V built in May 2006 that came with XP Pro pre-installed. I performed a clean install of Win7 in December last year but with this mobo - I believe you have a similar one - an Asus A8N32-SLI-Deluxe and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ @2200 MHz dual processor, I think I am stuck with the 32-bit architecture for now. Not quite ready to rebuild the entire box. Close, but not quite! Plus I keep reading how there isn't a whole lot of software optimized for 64-bit; that some of mine would probably work via developer workarounds and others might not work at all on 64-bit. I'm not certain but I can't afford to re-provision the box with new software all over again to accommodate 64-bit and I probably wouldn’t know until after I have a new system.

@f0dder: I realize most of that now. I searched again and found a few more articles to read after I posted that, including one here at DC where you and another member had a lively discussion about the licensing restriction by Microsoft. Interesting read! So I guess that this is just how it is, which is what I pretty much knew but I never knew exactly why. I see that the PAE settings could possibly be changed in the registry but it appears that doing that could very likely just bork something else in the system up, so naturally I'll leave everything as is. But I did want a better understanding of why I needed to.

Thanks!!

Jim

1154

Living Room / Re: Yay, Upgrade time! - Inspire me with hardware I can buy =-D

« Last post by J-Mac on March 17, 2010, 12:18 AM »

It has been quite some time since I heard a loud PSU. I don’t know if I've just been lucky or if PSU fans have just gotten that much quieter.

Jim

1155

Living Room / Re: Donationcoder: How did you find it + What has your experience been like so far.

« Last post by J-Mac on March 16, 2010, 11:33 PM »

Hi. My name is Michael and I am a software addict.

-Darwin (March 16, 2010, 11:08 PM)

I hope you take my post in the same vein as it was meant - mean and nasty...   purely in jest!!

Hey, I have seen just about everyone else here rib you about that; I just couldn't pass it up!   

Jim

1156

Living Room / Re: First compelling reason to switch to Windows 7

« Last post by J-Mac on March 16, 2010, 10:48 PM »

IainB: hold back your conspiracy theory horses, there!

There's pretty sound technical reasons for going to 4096-byte sectors, but that's covered elsewhere. Western-Digital has actually gone to lengths to make legacy OSes support these drives at all - exposing 512-byte sectors and doing internal handling (which is a fault imho, they should've exposed 4k sectors and dropped legacy support), and even adding a "offset-by-1" jumper so people who can't figure out how to manually create partitions (which solves the performance problem 100%) don't get the performance problems.

As for the 4GB limit in 32bit XP, keep in mind that 4GB is the logical memory limit for a 32bit OS. Yes, since the PPro we've been able to address more than 4GB in 32bit mode, but it's done through "memory windows" - which is mostly useful for running a crapload of apps at once, or pretty specialized big applications. Basically server stuff... so while the limit might suck, it's fair enough they don't want a client OS potentially eating server OS marketshare.

What really sucks about the 4GB limit is that it's on physical memory addresses rather than "available memory", which has given all those "I have 4GB but can only use 3.25GB" problems... and that's something you can thank fscktarded 3rd-party driver developers for. XP RTM supported 4GB-total, but because of people thinking "oh, we're on 32bit, we only have to handle PHYSICALADDRESS.LOWPART", users experienced BSODs. And following tradition, Microsoft bent over for sucky 3rd-party developers instead of saying "go fix your crap if you want it to run on Windows".

-f0dder (March 13, 2010, 10:23 AM)

@f0dder: I installed Windows 7 32-bit and thought that my 4 GB of RAM would finally be recognized, or at least more of it would be than was on XP Pro. Nay - Win7 shows the same lousy 2.75 GB RAM available also. (See attached image)

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I have read about my Nvidia graphics card, though having a 512 MB memory cache of its own, reserves some of my 4 GB but still I though it was less than the 1.25 GB that is not available to me. Can you - or anyone here - explain to me how and why only 2.75 GB of my 4 GB of RAM is available? Not in baby talk but at least in something that might be comprehended by a non-coder?

Thanks!

Jim

1157

Living Room / Re: Donationcoder: How did you find it + What has your experience been like so far.

« Last post by J-Mac on March 16, 2010, 10:34 PM »

Hmmm... I am really not sure. I suspect that I was flailing around on Google trying to find the answer to a question that I had about software (this was 5 years ago!) and found my way here that way. I was amazed at how gracious and approachable mouser was (and is) and I've been here ever since.

-Darwin (March 15, 2010, 11:30 PM)

Oh come on Mike! Tell the truth! Your devastating addiction to purchasing software just would NOT allow you to pass up this place, correct?!?! Be honest - The first step toward recovery is admitting that you have a problem....

          



Your buddy,

Jim   

1158

Living Room / Re: Donationcoder: How did you find it + What has your experience been like so far.

« Last post by J-Mac on March 16, 2010, 10:29 PM »

I found DonationCoder about three years ago when I was searching for a discount coupon for some program - can't remember which; I think it might have been Website Watcher - and one of the search results was here. Turns out that by signing up and making the suggested "lifetime donation" at that time Website Watcher ended up costing me about the same as if I had no discount at all! But when I found DC and looked around I was impressed enough by the vast knowledge fount, the unique and great way that the donations are handled, and the generally pleasant atmosphere, I just fell in love with the site and never looked back! Unlike many tech-oriented sites members here seemed more relaxed, more tolerant of folks who aren't as expert as themselves. Of course one of the first posts I made got me flamed something awful by one of the members here! Still love the place.

Thank you.

Jim

1159

General Software Discussion / Re: real dimensions

« Last post by J-Mac on March 16, 2010, 10:07 PM »

I recently installed PixelWindow which works on Windows 7; a lot of them I found do not. PixelWindow works BUT.... it is an AdobeAir app, which I hate. So I used it for what I needed at the time and then dumped it.

Thanks!

Jim

BTW, neither of the other apps mentioned here work on Win7, or at least they claim not to.

1160

General Software Discussion / Re: Firewalls are wonderful things except when they aren’t.

« Last post by J-Mac on March 16, 2010, 10:05 PM »

Heck, the Windows 7 UAC pop ups are more than enough to scare a lot of inexperienced folks. If I recommend software to someone I find I now get calls saying things like, " Hey! What the heck did you do to me?! I tried to install that program you told me about but every time I try to run it I get warning pop ups saying that the program might be dangerous and could harm my computer! Why would you suggest I use this?"

Doesn’t take much for some!

Jim

1161

Living Room / Re: Stephen's Weekly Tech News - Edition 5

« Last post by J-Mac on March 16, 2010, 11:10 AM »

Needed or not, thank you for the news updates, Stephen. They are very much appreciated!

Jim

1162

Living Room / Re: Pirate vs. Paying Customer illustrated

« Last post by J-Mac on March 16, 2010, 11:06 AM »

Agreed. I don’t have anything on my machines that isn't either licensed or free/donationware. I don’t harass those who do; I just don’t do it myself. I used to have to go over to my brother's house and clean up his computer about every three months because he is the opposite: he doesn’t have anything on his box that IS licensed. And he never updates whatever AV I install for him. I don’t even bother anymore; got tired of it. There are those who could never afford the stuff otherwise, and there are those who just don’t feel like paying for anything. Se la vie - I am not able to change that and so I don’t even try.

The only music I have here that wasn’t purchased is about 30-40 tracks that I downloaded from the original Napster -before they were sued and declared to be non-legal. And all of those were clips I wanted for slideshows that weren't commercially available otherwise, though some are available now. I was just brought up differently I guess and it hasn’t worn off. And at my age I don’t think it will now! 

Doesn’t make me special; it's just the way I am. To each...

Thanks!

Jim

1163

Living Room / Re: Pirate vs. Paying Customer illustrated

« Last post by J-Mac on March 14, 2010, 09:30 PM »

I really hate people who continuoysly talk about how wrong piracy is, how sad it is for the artist, how much you suck if you download illegally - its annoying!

-RedPillow (March 14, 2010, 04:18 PM)

Well, some find the opposite annoying. We're just an annoying bunch of peeps, aren't we?   

Jim

1164

Living Room / Re: Pirate vs. Paying Customer illustrated

« Last post by J-Mac on March 13, 2010, 12:35 PM »

Interesting OpEd article on the UbiSoft debacle -  http://bit.ly/clZtRB

-wraith808 (March 12, 2010, 12:41 PM)

Why do you use bit.ly instead of direct links? please stop it.

-f0dder (March 13, 2010, 07:53 AM)

I don’t even try to change other people's behavior; not my job! However I just use a Greasemonkey script TinyURL Decoder. It automagically changes all the shortened URLs I see to full links. Easier for me that way!

Thanks!

Jim

1165

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the Best Movie Collection Organizer Program

« Last post by J-Mac on March 12, 2010, 10:17 PM »

OK, OK.... one more example that really bit my rear-end. I have the boxed sets for all seven seasons of The Shield TV series. In Movie Collector I had added all episodes and extensive plot summaries for each episode. It was one of the first TV series I entered in MC and I went a little overboard. In DVD Profiler I add the seven seasons but no child profiles are in their database, so therefore no episodes are listed.     So after much ado I managed to add a child profile for each season along with copying over my plot summaries. Of course when these were submitted to their DB they were all rejected because my summaries were more than the DVD boxes had on them.   

Later the program asked me about checking for updates and I mistakenly thought it would check for program updates. Instead it checked my database against their online database and.....  they...... "corrected" my database!! Yes, deleting all of my seven seasons of episodes!

Now it turns out that you can "lock" your data on a disc by disc basis so that it can't do that, but that is how I found out about that setting. Too late IMO. I think they should pop up a confirmation dialog that explains that you will lose all personally added data, but they didn't feel it was necessary because, after all, they are "correcting" my data with their vastly superior data. OK, they didn't exactly put it that way but that is basically what they said with other words.

Needless to say I was not amused...

Jim

1166

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the Best Movie Collection Organizer Program

« Last post by J-Mac on March 12, 2010, 10:07 PM »

No problem. Understand that DVD Profiler is a pretty decent software otherwise. The issues I posted just happen to be points that nag at me - might be personal preference in my case, IDK. But I like a little more freedom to add notes, etc., to my liking while most of their users seem to want to adhere to some rigid, self-made rules that tend to make me become a little resistant. OK, maybe a lot resistant!

Jim

1167

Living Room / Re: Ars Technica on the problem with adblocking

« Last post by J-Mac on March 11, 2010, 12:57 AM »

I don’t mind reasonable ads. But what's reasonable? Google Ad-Sense text ads are fine IMO. Small images don’t bother me either. What I cannot abide, however, are Flash ads or any larger ads that blink bright colors at me. They're distracting. I also won't stay on a page where the content is in a narrow column in the center and is surrounded by columns of ads on each side that take up more real estate than the content itself. I abhor self-starting videos, with and without the ability to pause or stop them. And I can't stand audio suddenly blaring at me from an ad somewhere on the damn page!

If content providers would refuse such ads I would turn off my AdBlock Plus on their sites. But they usually cannot or will not turn down the revenue and so I block. And if they in turn block me, so be it. I can deal with that. 

Thanks!

Jim

1168

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the Best Movie Collection Organizer Program

« Last post by J-Mac on March 10, 2010, 10:50 PM »

DVD Profiler is OK but nothing special.

-J-Mac (January 05, 2010, 12:07 AM)

I know this is an old remark, J-Mac, but mind elaborating on that statement for the curious? I don't use DVD Profiler, but I know at one time it was the premier solution for movie collectors because of its features & exclusive database of movie art. Is this no longer the case?

-Innuendo (March 10, 2010, 09:18 AM)

A lot of little gripes, mostly personal things I guess. In the end, DVD Profiler is for the "elite", and I guess I ain't!! Some examples:

• You enter a barcode in the "Add movie" dialog and a result is returned from their own database; a database of "profiles" that have been submitted by users and thoroughly scrubbed and edited by "elite" users. Well, actually it appears that any user can comment on submitted profiles but the longer-term members are given most of the weight. You don’t get results from any other source even if they don’t happen to have the DVD in their database yet.
• By DVD Profiler's counting scheme I have about 800 DVDs in my collection. Wow! I had no idea! In reality I have about 200 DVD titles; however DVD Profiler counts each separate disc as a DVD. So since my boxed set of "Homicide: Life on the Streets" (Entire series) contains 35 discs DVD Profiler counts these as 35 separate DVDs. Or actually 35 separate "profiles". Their statistics only count profiles, not DVD titles so I have to count up my DVD titles manually to keep track of how many I own/have purchased. Apparently this is how the purists prefer to view their collections. Personally that seems kinda stupid to me. But hey - what do I know?!
• Many of the DVDs in their database only have the main profile and no "child" profiles, so there is no way to show episodes in TV series. I have tried to find out how to add my own child profiles but the help file just tells me to get it from their database. It discourages users from entering their own. We are not smart enough to do it correctly!
• In a few instances I entered a new DVD in my database that was not yet in their database. Immediately after entering it the program asks you to be a good member and submit it to their database, which I did. And boy oh boy did that get the "elite" upset! You see, I normally enter what I want to appear in my collection. If the DVD case only shows four cast members I may go ahead and enter 10 or 12; depends on what I wish to have there. They didn't like that. Also I often enter more plot information than is contains on the case. Again, I was blasted for it in the "Submission" forum. You should never enter anything more than what the DVD has on the case or in its credits. That way their database remains "pure". I had to laugh at all that but these folks are very, very serious. Basically suggested I never submit anymore DVDs to the database. Which is OK by me. I only did so out of courtesy and because the program asked me to do so.
• Take a look at their forums and you will see threads 20 to 30 pages long and longer with arguments over whether a producer's name should show his/her middle initial or not. I kid you not! People viewing every movie the producer was ever credited on and keeping a running score of the number of times the middle initial was used vs. not used. Some of the people are as vicious as I have ever seen online! Kinda creepy, really.

Anyway those are some of the reasons I posted my comment. There's more but why go any further with it. The program itself looks nice though it is extremely slow to open and respond. I don’t know what it is programmed in but it appears to be something like Java or similar. (Not a coder myself). It takes a lot of CPU and memory also.

I recently purchased CATVids from FN Programs - the SoftCAT folks. Very simple Access database setup. Not nearly as flashy as DVD Profiler but much easier to manipulate my data. And no one gives me a lot of crap for adding too much in the way of plots, etc.!!

Thanks!

Jim

1169

Living Room / Re: Amazon.com == AMAZING!

« Last post by J-Mac on March 10, 2010, 10:22 PM »

They also do price matching with other internet companies. In the UK you can almost guarantee that Amazon products will be 1 penny cheaper than play.com.

-Carol Haynes (March 10, 2010, 09:57 AM)

Amazon used to have a 30-Day price guarantee, meaning that if the Amazon price dropped within 30 days of your purchase you would get a refund for the difference. However they stopped doing that sometime early last year. Now that was a great feature! I miss that one.

Jim

1170

Official Announcements / Re: March 2010 Discounts and Giveaway Drawing

« Last post by J-Mac on March 09, 2010, 01:06 PM »

Mouse, if you want, ill compile a list and contact all the companies to ask if the discounts are still available, if they are/or not in some cases I will let you know which to remove/keep.

-Stephen66515 (March 09, 2010, 12:21 PM)

Now that would be cool!   

After all, even though I probably purchased about 3/4 of them, that's still another 25% I could buy!   

Thank you.

Jim

1171

Official Announcements / Re: March 2010 Discounts and Giveaway Drawing

« Last post by J-Mac on March 09, 2010, 01:04 PM »

No, not necessary. It was just a little weird seeing all of those gone and yet something no longer around at all like Evernote 2.1 still there.

Thanks!

Jim

1172

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool

« Last post by J-Mac on March 09, 2010, 03:17 AM »

You can have 7.80 and 7.90 installed in parallel for testing purposes.

Keep 7.80 in your default Linkman folder. Start the 7.90 installer, select USB Mode in the options, but don't install to a USB stick, instead install to a folder on your hard drive, e.g. c:\Linkman. This way the new version Linkman will not touch the registry etc and keep all data in c:\Linkman. Now if you want to test why 7.90 is not running correnctly, just quit 7.80 in Tray Icon and launch 7.90 from c:\Linkman. After the test just quit 7.90 and restart 7.80.

-Outertech Support (March 09, 2010, 02:05 AM)

Won't that throw me back to the non-working Firefox extension though?

Jim

1173

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool

« Last post by J-Mac on March 09, 2010, 03:16 AM »

Thanks. I now have 7.8 running like it was so I'll stick with this until maybe the next update is available. Or I hear from others here that they are running 7.9 without any problems. I am running LM on Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit. I haven't had any other problems installing programs - this was the first since installing Win7.

BTW, I am thinking of switching to Chrome but cannot get my LM bookmarks into Chrome. I tried appending and nothing happens. I have tried several of the Export "examples" but none of them are importing into Chrome. I really don’t like that the export options are just templates names HTML Example 1, HTML example 2, etc. I don’t know what the differences are or why there are so many. I can't find a good explanation of how to differentiate between them or how to use which for what!

Thank you.

Jim

1174

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool

« Last post by J-Mac on March 09, 2010, 01:59 AM »

I reinstalled 7.8.0012 but still got the new, non-improved Firefox extension, so I uninstalled that within Firefox. I have the old Firefox extension setup file and I will try to install that next.

Jim

1175

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool

« Last post by J-Mac on March 09, 2010, 01:38 AM »

Now Linkman won't even run. I have opened it several times but it only runs for about 20m seconds and then terminates. The damn Microsoft dialog doesn’t say why, just that it has to close.

I am going to reinstall 7.8.0012. No problem doing that, is there?

Jim

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