Recent Posts

1601

General Software Discussion / Re: This site compares over 40 different online To-Do lists

« Last post by J-Mac on March 08, 2009, 11:28 AM »

It is more than two years old, and IMO it doesn't tell me anything at all about the various To-do list apps - it just lists them and shows a few (very few) sharing options, like "RSS, email".

Or am I missing it?

-J-Mac (March 08, 2009, 12:02 AM)

Other than that some of us might still find it a useful set of links?

-40hz (March 08, 2009, 11:03 AM)

True, the links are a good point. I just had the impression that it was going to be an actual comparison. Wrong again!

Thanks!

Jim

1602

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: List of disc catalogers

« Last post by J-Mac on March 08, 2009, 11:27 AM »

Yeah, your experience is similar to mine, Jim - I back up everything to external HDs now: OS and software instals to disc images and documents and software installers to folders. However, I *did* backup everything to CD-R for about 10 years, so have about 300 discs lying around. I was never able to cram all the contents onto the disc label with a Sharpie, so bought WhereIsIt? to catalogue what I had and where.

-Darwin (March 05, 2009, 07:36 AM)

Just for the heck of it I catalogged my CD's with WhereIsIt?. I already have them in Music Collector but I wanted to see WhereIsIt do something other than just catalog my HDD's (Boring!). It did a nice job with my CD's. No cover art or anything; just the contents, which is all you really need.

Jim

1603

General Software Discussion / Re: Acrobat bug can lead to malware installs without even opening an infected file

« Last post by J-Mac on March 08, 2009, 11:24 AM »

Steve - OK, I see you posted what you did accidentally. I was going to comment that Revo uninstalled the Adobe Reader fine here.

Glad you got it sorted out!

Jim

1604

General Software Discussion / Re: Acrobat bug can lead to malware installs without even opening an infected file

« Last post by J-Mac on March 08, 2009, 12:28 AM »

Just uninstalled Acro Reader w/Revo Uninstaller. It had surprisingly few left over registry entries. I also have Foxit for viewing PDF files, and Nuance PDF Converter 5 Professional for creating and editing PDF files. That's what I always use anyway. I can't remember what application I installed that also installed Adobe Reader 8 but it did it without asking first. I do remember that much. Pitiful.

Thanks!

Jim

1605

General Software Discussion / Re: Mouse gestures program looking for beta testers

« Last post by J-Mac on March 08, 2009, 12:13 AM »

I have tested several mouse gesture programs but, unfortunately, none of them abridge the most essential features and stability.

Examples:

 - Amazing Brass: Developed in assembler, A great idea but it doesn't support Logitech drivers. Many stability issues as well (at least on my system).

 - MaZZick

 - StrokeIt

Regarding "most essential features", I mean working with windows on EVERY program: minimize, maximize, restore, go back, go forward. It's is my opinion: The rest of the functionalities can be better accomplished with traditional keyword shortcuts.


So, I have to ask: Does your program brings something new?

 

-Diegoz (March 06, 2009, 08:06 AM)

Nice post, Diegoz.

I only use the Firefox extension "All-In-One Gestures" currently. I did use StrokeIt for several months but after a Windows reinstall I didn’t reinstall it. No particular reason; I just wasn’t using it as often as I had thought I would. Also, I also prefer keyboard shortcuts now.

Thanks!

Jim

1606

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extension: Link Extend

« Last post by J-Mac on March 08, 2009, 12:06 AM »

I have a GreaseMonkey script that used to do that - but it stopped working about a month after I installed it. Not sure why I still have it installed; maybe I think it is suddenly going to wake up and work again?

Thanks!

Jim

1607

General Software Discussion / Re: This site compares over 40 different online To-Do lists

« Last post by J-Mac on March 08, 2009, 12:02 AM »

It is more than two years old, and IMO it doesn't tell me anything at all about the various To-do list apps - it just lists them and shows a few (very few) sharing options, like "RSS, email".

Or am I missing it?

Jim

1608

Living Room / Re: Tall tale or true?

« Last post by J-Mac on March 07, 2009, 11:37 PM »

Reading the comments is almost more fun than reading the blog post! A whole lot of "Stepford" fans there.

Thanks!

Jim

1609

Screenshot Captor / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - ScreenshotCaptor - 2.48.01 - March 6, 2009

« Last post by J-Mac on March 07, 2009, 12:21 AM »

SSC is now taking a heck of a long time to complete a capture if I haven't used it for a while. After that it is quick enough. But let it sit and it can take 4, 5 minutes. Even then it stays red sometimes and never does signify the capture is complete unless I manually open the main window. Weird behavior.

-J-Mac

After talking with J-Mac I think we've identified the cause of the problem to be the fact that he had many hundreds of screenshots in the Screenshot directory.. While i will work on removing the slowdown that occurs with so many screenshots, people might consider moving screenshots out of their main root Screenshots directory after a while.

The new MoveTo menu items are designed to help you do that regularly and painlessly.

-mouser (March 07, 2009, 12:10 AM)

Or we could just change the default screenshot location. File>Change Screenshot Directory.

Jim

1610

General Software Discussion / Re: Website Watcher 5 is out - Plus Aignes.com blog

« Last post by J-Mac on March 05, 2009, 10:35 PM »

It doesn't seem to be mentioned in the list of new features, but I'm sad to see Martin changed the upgrade policy from free minor updates to a 1-year subscription plan.

Can't blame him though, he has been providing free updates to v4.xx for years and probably needs to make more money.

Edit: apparently this was changed almost a year ago and I just hadn't noticed .. I guess I should have used WSW to track it's own upgrade policy page .

-Jibz (January 15, 2009, 12:32 AM)

Same here - I purchased a couple of years ago and didn’t notice the change until I was checking the version I had and saw that it showed how many days I had left to use it. I was more than a little surprised - that must have been added with the previous minor update.

So I went ahead and purchased a year renewal at the end of January and...  I don't really see a whole lot of difference in this version from the last! Most likely the changes are in areas that I don't use very often, because the features that I do use appear to be very much like they have always been. Also I wish there was some better documentation especially WRT scripts for filters.

Thanks!

Jim

1611

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: List of disc catalogers

« Last post by J-Mac on March 05, 2009, 01:07 AM »

OK - No, I don't have any data CD/DVD's in the Collectorz.com software. Then again, other than CD's with software installation files I don't really have many. I stopped backing up to DVD's when my data files became too large to fit on them. I use external drives instead.

Like I said, I do use it to keep all my HDD's catalogged and I update those weekly. But as I said also, I can't help but to feel like I am so underusing the application. It appears - at least from the documentation that does come with it - that it is mostly designed to catalog media disks.

Thank you.

Jim

1612

General Software Discussion / Re: First looks at OpenOffice 3.1

« Last post by J-Mac on March 05, 2009, 12:46 AM »

The trouble with MS is it is all smoke and mirrors - you won't see a massive memory usgae because most of MS's 'preload' isn't specific to MS Office (but if you look in startup you will find MSO). A lot of the support required for MS Office is shared support for other apps and loaded as various DLLs with cryptic names even when Office isn't installed.

OO doesn't have that luxury. It is written to run on Windows, Linux, Mac (and others) so it has to have libraries written for specific support for OO. There is no way round that.

Having said that if you want to see how bad MS Office can be try using Outlook (any version since 2002) and you will find out what slow is. Not only is it horrendously slow to load but when you check your emails it freezes up periodically until it has finished downloading.

It is interesting that you single out OO Draw for improvement - MSO doesn't even have a draw feature!

Have you tried inkscape

-Carol Haynes (March 04, 2009, 04:23 AM)

I only know what I can see. 

Regarding Outlook, I was just using it (once again - it's an on and off, love/hate - or more like a hate/really hate relationship!) and had to stop again; it now closes immediately after opening. Arrgghh! Tried Detect and Repair - didn’t help at all. So it is in the can again. Back to T-Bird for now.

Carol - you seem to think I am attacking OO and pushing Office. Not so. I mentioned the one thing I don't like about OO and you are on me like, well, you know! Take it easy - I am not besmirching your beloved OO! Regarding my comments on Draw, I know full well that MS has no such app. I just want OO's Draw to work better - and I am not alone!

Jim

1613

General Software Discussion / Re: First looks at OpenOffice 3.1

« Last post by J-Mac on March 04, 2009, 02:01 AM »

Quickstart should only open once and sit in your tray, or you can set it to open on startup.
If it goes everytime you open a file, maybe you have it actually disabled and so it loads every time you open a OO file?

-Edvard (March 03, 2009, 05:52 PM)

I don't want it open, taking memory for no good reason, at all! So I would close it - completely. And, yes, it will open again and again if you close it. I have to end up disabling it altogether - and users shouldn’t have to figure out how to do that. Even Microsoft doesn't keep the entire Office suite open in the background by default so individual programs load faster.

Jim

-J-Mac (March 03, 2009, 06:05 PM)

Actually MS Office does startup an application at startup - they just don't put an icon in the system tray. Also MS loads all sorts of modules into memory with Windows at startup too support all kinds of software (whether you use it or not) - check you task manager.

As I understand it OpenOffice do not load the whol application into memory at startup they just load a helper which appears in the system tray - which many many programs do and given that it is a cross platform app it is not surprising that it has to rely on non-MS libraries etc. to run.

-Carol Haynes (March 03, 2009, 07:46 PM)

I have - and I cannot find anywhere near as much memory used by MS Office as I see with OO, though I do prefer some parts of OO more than MS Office. In other areas OO still has a ways to go to catch up. I really wish that they could get Draw working better; I love it but it manages to bite me most of the time!!

Thanks!

Jim

1614

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: List of disc catalogers

« Last post by J-Mac on March 04, 2009, 01:57 AM »

The main value of WhereIsIt?, in my opinion, is that it saves a list of all of the contents of you media in one searchable location. So, you don't have to have the CD/DVD in a drive to review its contents - indeed, you can have 200 CD's and DVD's indexed and available fron one file. It's always worked flawlessly for me in this capacity.

-Darwin (March 03, 2009, 10:29 PM)

You mean by inserting the disks into the drive and letting WhereIsIt? read them, correct? That's cool but I already have all that catalogged in Movie and Music Collector.

Jim

1615

Living Room / Re: Surfulater 3 - huge price hike (166%) + where is the Firefox add-on?

« Last post by J-Mac on March 04, 2009, 01:54 AM »

Don’t feel bad...  I purchased Ultra Recall only a few months ago and the developer just posted last week that it is basically being abandoned.

-J-Mac (November 13, 2008, 10:29 PM)

Where did you see that?  He's still releasing versions as of 2/24/2009, so it doesn't seem to be abandoned...

-wraith808 (February 26, 2009, 11:24 AM)

Have you been to their forum? Or the outlinersoftware.com forum? The developer removed his Roadmap post and replaced it with a statement that Ultra Recall would no longer be actively developed due to the poor economy. After a large outcry by users along with a lot of posts at various forums, he replaced that statement with a much smaller Roadmap - with most of the significant future improvements missing. Since then he has released three minor bug-fix updates.

I still use it - Kyle says that he won't abandon UR and that he will definitely support it through Windows 7 compatibility. But probably no innovative changes to it.

I believe there were some comments about this on the Bits page when it was offered there a week or so ago; you can still see that page if you search there. I'm still using it since it is still a great application as is, though I hate to see development stopped on it.

Jim

1616

General Software Discussion / Re: First looks at OpenOffice 3.1

« Last post by J-Mac on March 03, 2009, 06:05 PM »

Quickstart should only open once and sit in your tray, or you can set it to open on startup.
If it goes everytime you open a file, maybe you have it actually disabled and so it loads every time you open a OO file?

-Edvard (March 03, 2009, 05:52 PM)

I don't want it open, taking memory for no good reason, at all! So I would close it - completely. And, yes, it will open again and again if you close it. I have to end up disabling it altogether - and users shouldn’t have to figure out how to do that. Even Microsoft doesn't keep the entire Office suite open in the background by default so individual programs load faster.

Jim

1617

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: List of disc catalogers

« Last post by J-Mac on March 03, 2009, 03:51 PM »

It´s weird to see a whereisit user not being a big fan of it using it only for HD-tracking. The most important sense is to use it for filesearches on external data media, not only for locals.

-Crush (March 03, 2009, 05:48 AM)

I guess - but doesn't Locate32 and/or Everything search those just as fast, if not faster? Or does WhereIsIt? also index the contents? If so, then there's a feature I was not aware of.

Thanks!

Jim

1618

General Software Discussion / Re: First looks at OpenOffice 3.1

« Last post by J-Mac on March 03, 2009, 03:48 PM »

I've always hated the QuickStart thing; why are we required to open the whole office suite just to work on a Writer document? I think that's a poor implementation. I prefer only opening what I need at any time.

Jim

-J-Mac (March 02, 2009, 10:17 PM)

You don't have to use quick start - jusrt click on the application directly.

-Carol Haynes (March 03, 2009, 04:54 AM)

Oh, I do! But it is the default so on a new installation - or at least it used to be. Opening a document or any of the individual apps triggers the QuickStart. Maybe they changed it in this version? Hopefully.

Jim

1619

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: List of disc catalogers

« Last post by J-Mac on March 02, 2009, 10:32 PM »

BTW, I thought I'd mention that I am also using WhereIsIt? - or actually I am severely underusing it! I've created a catalog of each of my HDD's and - well, that's about it. I update them regularly and save them. Duh! Other than that I don't have any idea what to do with this software. I ended up getting Collectorz.com apps for my DVDs, CDs, and Books, and SoftCAT for my software inventory. So that leaves WhereIsIt? as the perennial bridesmaid, but never a bride. Documentation is disappointingly thin and the application itself is somewhat less than intuitive.

If anyone has any tips on decent uses for WhereIsIt? I'd love to hear them. Otherwise it's getting booted.

Thanks!

Jim

1620

General Software Discussion / Re: First looks at OpenOffice 3.1

« Last post by J-Mac on March 02, 2009, 10:17 PM »

I've always hated the QuickStart thing; why are we required to open the whole office suite just to work on a Writer document? I think that's a poor implementation. I prefer only opening what I need at any time.

Jim

1621

General Software Discussion / Re: Super Flexible File Synchronizer Pro says Zaine

« Last post by J-Mac on February 28, 2009, 02:57 PM »

I agree that it is a bit of a pain - small pain, not a big pain! - to have to open the Edit window to see what your parameters are for any given job. I think that v.3 had a "Summary" view that showed a lot of the main parameters. I could be confusing this with a different sync program though. (My memory is going.........   ).

Also, a few updates ago the new (or revised?) Safety feature defaulting to NOT performing the sync if a certain percentage of deletions was to occur drove me nuts until I discovered that setting. I think Tobias changed that a few updates later, but I had already changed all of mine manually.

Generally a very good program IMO.

Jim

1622

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

« Last post by J-Mac on February 28, 2009, 02:35 PM »

When I ran Google Desktop Search it built a separate index folder that eventually grew to over 6 GB!! As it indexed it keeps adding to index but never deleted anything. I haven't run it for a couple of years so I don’t know if they have changed their policy of not removing deleted files from their index.

-J-Mac (February 11, 2009, 01:06 PM)

I installed GDS an hour back coz I'm looking for something to index my Firefox cache. It does have an option to remove deleted files from the index so index size going out of control shouldn't be a problem now.

I didn't like it though, for several reasons:
It's not very customizable.
It's one of those annoying apps that goes ahead and does what it pleases coz the users are idiots who don't know any better - despite my selecting to index only the browsing history I noticed it had gone ahead and indexed other stuff anyway.
It has one of the clunkiest, most fcuked up interface I've seen on any app... right from the unconventional installer, to the settings pages that open in a browser, to a mandatory widgets module being installed, to the main executable trying to call home _after_ I had uninstalled it, the whole GDS experience was really bizarre and infuriating!

-nosh (February 28, 2009, 12:08 PM)

I know that a lot of people swear by Google, and after all they do offer some nice applications "free" of charge - if you don't count the cost of ads appearing on everything and your data being exposed as it is - but this is typical of a Google application. They do it their way and they do not offer a way to request or suggest anything different.

Jim

1623

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: List of disc catalogers

« Last post by J-Mac on February 27, 2009, 03:47 PM »

40% discount on SoftCat until the end of March (thanks to dc member MrZebulon)

that works out @ just under $18 or less than €16
find it in the forum (only accessible to supporting members) under:
Special User Sections > Shareware Discounts for Members > Shareware Discount Codes Here

from http://www.fnprg.com...softcat/softcat.html
SoftCAT is a powerful database program designed to help you organize your software inventory.

I see Jim is using it and Tinjaw recommends it

... I am doing fine with SoftCAT Plus for my installed software catalog/database ...

-J-Mac (November 18, 2008, 10:42 PM)

-tomos (February 27, 2009, 07:22 AM)

I am already using SoftCAT - very nice program!

Jim

1624

General Software Discussion / Re: First looks at OpenOffice 3.1

« Last post by J-Mac on February 27, 2009, 03:45 PM »

 
wat?

My 3.0 installation didn't do that... they must have changed it.

-Edvard (February 27, 2009, 10:21 AM)

I didn't experience it - I think it was still in beta or pre-release and when I went to look at it there was a lot of turmoil at their forums about it, so I just stuck with the version I had - think it was 2.3.x or 2.4.x - can't remember.

Jim

1625

General Software Discussion / Re: First looks at OpenOffice 3.1

« Last post by J-Mac on February 26, 2009, 11:32 PM »

When 3.0 was first available a few months ago I was all ready to download and install it but then I read all the stink about how the installer automatically associates all Microsoft Office files with Open Office - without asking and without offering any facility to change that from within OO. A lot of folks were unhappy and very vocal about that but OO was not looking to change that behavior. Basically a stance of - if you're going to use it, do it all the way.

Ballsy, I admit, but a bit over the top! I wonder if they finally decided to relent and stop that?

Jim