Recent Posts

1951

General Software Discussion / Re: S.O.S.....Having troubles "upgrading" from Vista to XP SP2

« Last post by Dormouse on December 14, 2007, 05:20 PM »

Since there are lots of threads on the net from frustrated Tosh owners trying to get to XP, including for your model, I suspect that they never made XP drivers.

1952

General Software Discussion / Re: Virtual Desktop suggestions?

« Last post by Dormouse on November 21, 2007, 05:38 PM »

I'm about to re-setup all the family PCs. They will all be setup to run Linux (Ubuntu probably) and XP Pro. After thinking about it, I think I've decided to put one of the OSs into a VM and run it like that.

Any ideas about which makes the best 'base' OS? And how much does that affect the choice of VM? Currently, I'm looking at VirtualBox which runs on all the OSs, but this is not true of them all. Also thinking I will make Linux the base OS since I have more confidence in its security and insulation from threats and that will be the OS most used for internet etc.

1953

Developer's Corner / Re: Best way to track the time you spend on each project

« Last post by Dormouse on November 11, 2007, 03:55 PM »

You can use ToDoList2 to do this.

Just put project name into the list and press the timer button. When you want to switch to another project, you just press the button on that. Or stop it when you want.

Lots of other stuff too, including links to all relevant info on a project & ability to keep notes.

Free.

1954

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« Last post by Dormouse on November 09, 2007, 12:38 PM »

So, you blame Microsoft for the fact that your stuff doesn't work?

-Josh (November 09, 2007, 12:19 PM)

No, I don't blame MS; I don't care about MS. My stuff does work; it is just that it is 100% certain to work with XP and much less than 100% certain to work with Vista. So I don't move to Vista. That is not a problem for me and I don't blame anyone for it.

I do blame MS for their outrageous upgrade costs. Outrageous in the context of OEM costs, Linux costs and current OS costs (small, nil and nil).

I do blame them for producing something that brings no significant benefit to me, or at least I think it is their responsibility. I don't really care enough to blame them.

I had expected to upgrade everything to Vista. Now I'll give it a complete miss, as I did ME, except for the one system I have it on. Everything has Linux installed too. Everyone, even the kids, finds Linux easy. As things are, I probably won't upgrade Windows beyond XP.

Do I blame MS for that? No, I don't really care. Their systems are overly restrictive and getting worse. I think it will prove to be a failing business model. But I have alternatives, so I don't care whether they succeed or not.

1955

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« Last post by Dormouse on November 09, 2007, 10:31 AM »

I don't think you can hold drivers against Vista.

-Josh (November 09, 2007, 06:36 AM)

Of course we can. Either stuff works or it doesn't. XP mostly does, Vista often doesn't. I don't care if it is because I have unusual stuff, because MS have done a bad job or because other people haven't updated their drivers.

And if I'm worried about drivers, I'm not going to upgrade without being certain that everything I have or might get will work with Vista (and there's still quite a bit of software that isn't compatible and some less maintained stuff that probably will never be).

And having Vista on one computer and XP on the others means I know that I never think "I wish I had Vista on this computer", but do sometimes wish I didn't have Vista at all.

1956

General Software Discussion / Re: Maybe Vista doesn't suck?

« Last post by Dormouse on November 09, 2007, 01:02 AM »

Seems to me it is more an article about someone who hasn't installed the software to do these things on XP. The reason people most like dislike Vista is that it doesn't work well rather than not having more features than XP.

1957

General Software Discussion / Re: Starting a website; need suggestions.

« Last post by Dormouse on November 05, 2007, 06:01 PM »

1. Visit WebHostingTalk.com for info.
I can recommend iMountain and ASmallOrange. Reliablesite also seems to have generally good writeups. IMountain and Reliablesite are clusterbased and pretty fast.

2. SMF (this site) is pretty good. Also worth looking at CMS software (eg Joomla, drupal, dragonflycms) rather than just a Forum. Most sites don't need much coding - could just use a CMS. Most hosts have software & templates that you can use instead of Dreamweaver (quite a lot of free alternatives abvailable too). I think it is only worth going down this path if you have time to do the design and are sure that easier options won't suffice.

1958

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

« Last post by Dormouse on November 02, 2007, 05:24 PM »

If you are still having problems, I can send it to you by email.

-PPLandry (November 02, 2007, 02:19 PM)

Thanks very much for the offer. Eventually wondered if it might be an Opera issue and switched to Firefox and that worked. Means your site is not completely compatible with Opera. At least I did not have to resort to ie.

1959

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

« Last post by Dormouse on November 02, 2007, 01:06 PM »

Signed in and tried to download sqlnotes, but all I get is You Do Not Have Permission To View The Requested File

1960

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a small dockable, auto-hide notepad

« Last post by Dormouse on November 02, 2007, 06:44 AM »

Personally, I don't see Evernote as the same sort of program as Keynote. I use both, but in different ways.

1961

General Software Discussion / Re: Good websites/blogs/programs for managing money?

« Last post by Dormouse on November 02, 2007, 03:05 AM »

http://www.fool.com/
http://www.fool.co.uk/

1962

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

« Last post by Dormouse on October 31, 2007, 02:18 PM »

I really dislike Outlook. I use it at work where there is no choice and all software is poor. I get out of problems at home by using more than one client. The diskspace isn't an issue, I don't have them all in use all of the time so CPU usage only occurs when I I specifically load them. It means I have backups available automatically and that I can search with a variety of programs. Historically I mainly used Courier. I now mostly use The Bat. I still keep Courier, I also use TB. If, for some reason, probably to do with syncing I neded to use Outlook then I will set it up. You may need to send yourself copies of your mails so that you have them available in all clients, but it does mean that you don't have to rely on programs being able to search Outlook.

1963

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

« Last post by Dormouse on October 31, 2007, 01:57 AM »

I first started with Desktop search progs with Alta Vista (can't remember what they called it)

-Dormouse (October 28, 2007, 07:40 PM)

AltaVista Discovery?  Here's a blog post on it.

-rjbull (October 29, 2007, 06:32 AM)

That's the one. Must be about nine or ten years ago now.
Have also tried the Windows Search Prog, but stopped that fairly quickly because it slowed my system.

1964

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

« Last post by Dormouse on October 31, 2007, 01:50 AM »

Programs like Directory Opus and Xplorer2 have sophisticated search facilities which certainly include searching for folders.

For me desktop search is all about the deeper searching.

1965

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

« Last post by Dormouse on October 28, 2007, 07:40 PM »

I must say that I am a bit surprised at the lack of users of GDS in the survey.

I first started with Desktop search progs with Alta Vista (can't remember what they called it), tried an early version Blinkx (which started to cause problems after a while), Copernic (early, then moved away), then GDS & Yahoo. Moved away from GDS (I suspected it of disk-thrashing) and on to Copernic. I still have Copernic installed but don't use it much because it does not seem to find all my files. I keep it installed because so many people are positive about it and I think I may be missing a trick. I re-installed GDS (no disk thrashing now) which also has the advantage of searching Evernote and seems to work more effectively than Copernic.

Archivarius would be good for searching The Bat, but I use a number of email progs (Courier, Thunderbird & Opera too) after experiencing database problems with one a long time ago. Makes me feel I have some insurance to have more than one; all bar one are set up to leave the email on the server and one is set to clear it as it downloads.

1966

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

« Last post by Dormouse on October 28, 2007, 07:29 PM »

I do have sympathy with one man shows, and accept that they cannot be available all of the time. Of course, that is also a real-world disadvantage and means that future development is entirely dependent on that person's motivation and availability.

1967

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

« Last post by Dormouse on October 28, 2007, 02:29 PM »

potential customers are turned off before they can evaluate anything. 

-Ralf Maximus (October 28, 2007, 02:00 PM)

True. I've certainly been put off. I would not have downloaded it if I had known it would be limited to 10,000 files.

As suggested, I emailed the author about a week ago about the problem. No reply (yet); that doesn't impress me either.

1968

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a small dockable, auto-hide notepad

« Last post by Dormouse on October 23, 2007, 04:54 PM »

The grandaddy Keynote meets most of these needs. Portable, system tray, autosave options, fast. light on resources etc. Doesn't autohide but can be set to minimise after x minutes of non-use.

No longer being developed but a huge number of people still use it.

1969

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

« Last post by Dormouse on October 22, 2007, 02:40 AM »

Hi Dormouse - no, that's not right.

-Darwin (October 21, 2007, 03:41 PM)

That's good as the estimate ended up at 205GB.
I have run it now, only to hit the 10,000 file limit of the unregistered version, which really isn't big enough for me to assess the prog.

I have also noticed that the search seems to return each usage of the search word rather than each document/file that it is in; I'd like to change that but haven't found the switch to do that yet.

1970

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

« Last post by Dormouse on October 21, 2007, 12:25 PM »

After the comments here, I thought I'd look at Archivarius. Installed it and then saw the option to estimate the Index size. Still analysing but showing an index of 80GB on data of 216 GB. Can this be right (I notice that the stats previously given seem much more reasonable)? Don't think I will ever run it if it is.

1971

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review: TimeKeeper v2.20c by TSM, Kevin Pluck, Crypto-Central

« Last post by Dormouse on October 13, 2007, 02:41 PM »

I use ToDoList (see https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=5057.0 and http://www.codeproje.../tools/todolist2.asp) which is free and has a button that allows you to measure the time spent on each task. It's not the reason I use TDL, but it is a nice extra and TimeKeeper doesn't seem to add much functionality (if any).

1972

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your preferred File Manager

« Last post by Dormouse on October 07, 2007, 09:09 AM »

I've used pretty much all the alternatives suggested here including addons to Explorer.

I've ended up with 2 that I use regularly.

On my own main computer Dopus (and also on others via usb). You do need to configure it to your own needs to get the most from it; and this does take a long time because there are so many options But the result makes a lot of common actions very easy. It's a bit of a swiss army knife of a file manager able to do a lot of things that aren't pure file management. But it is powerful. The other downside (apart from the complxity), as so many others have said, is that it is more expensive than all the alternatives. but if you use it a lot, it is worth it. Doesn't stop me resenting the cost.

The other one I use regularly is Xplorer2 (mostly in the Lite version which I have put on all the other family computers). Relatively pure file manager. Elegant and very powerful.

I do need another file manager though. I had expected to move all the computers on to Vista, dual-booting with Linux, and then never to 'upgrade' Windows again. I don't think I will get to the Vista stage. I have it on one computer that came with it. Have the option of installing it on another - but doubt if I ever will. After XP, it is likely to be Linux for everyone with just one Windows computer for software not available on Linux. And I haven't found a Linujx File Manager in the class of DOpus or Xplorer2.