Recent Posts

2301

General Software Discussion / Re: List of newbie questions regarding software

« Last post by Darwin on September 09, 2008, 10:59 AM »

+1 in thanks for posting your observations about those notetakers/PIMs/writing aides. Very useful. I had the same reaction to LiquidStoryBinder, by the way  Sadly, I'd already bought it  when before trying it, but it was on sale at Bits du Jour (60% off) I love the GIMP analogy - hadn't thought of it that way myself, but it fits!

2302

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by Darwin on September 09, 2008, 10:54 AM »

Yeah, I like that a lot, too! Well spotted, Sugar. I didn't even notice it in the avatar. Thanks for posting a larger version, rowsdower 

2303

Living Room / Re: How many countries represented here on DC ?

« Last post by Darwin on September 09, 2008, 10:48 AM »

Canada - British Columbia, United Kingdom (mainly England but also Scotland).

I also have ties to Korea and the US (my wife is Korean-American and my children are tri-nationals - Canada, US, and UK - with the equivalent of permanent residence in Korea courtesy of their mother's having been born there).

Anyway, fun thread  

EDIT: followed Veign's lead and added my province. FWIW, in the UK my ties are primarily to Yorkshire, though my son was born in Cambridge, so I suppose that is the stronger tie for me!

2304

Living Room / Re: 32-bit Windows and the dreaded (and misunderstood) 4GB RAM limit

« Last post by Darwin on September 09, 2008, 10:44 AM »

So... bottom line: I might as well give the new stick of RAM to a friend, right? It causes me near physical pain to think about that 1GB SODDIM gathering dust (I don't want to give THAT away because at some point I may need to get warranty work done on the notebook and want to be able to return it to factory spec before doing so) unless I'm benefiting from my capriciousness  I'd rather write off the $35 and let someone else actually benefit from it...

2305

General Software Discussion / Re: How do you manage your email?

« Last post by Darwin on September 09, 2008, 08:01 AM »

Thanks for clearing that up, Tom (I had been wondering myself...) 

2306

Living Room / Re: 32-bit Windows and the dreaded (and misunderstood) 4GB RAM limit

« Last post by Darwin on September 09, 2008, 07:46 AM »

Of course, I could always dual-boot my machine with Linux and use all of that glorious RAM...

2307

Living Room / Re: 32-bit Windows and the dreaded (and misunderstood) 4GB RAM limit

« Last post by Darwin on September 09, 2008, 07:37 AM »

Here's a MS KB about this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946003/

Thanks for all of your feedback, everyone. I'm leaning toward making a gift of this RAM to my friend and moving on. I can't see any benefit to be derived from retaining 4GB vs 3GB on this system - the amount available to windows is identical in either scenario. I have another friend with a 32-bit XP Pro system with 4GB RAM and virtually identical specs (he has a much higher spec processor than me but other wise same soundcard, videocard, etc.) and his reports the same amount of installed RAM.

C'est la vie... a fool and his money... 

2308

Living Room / Re: Another Kodak Complaint

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 10:41 PM »

Good for you, cap2008! I'm glad this was resolved to your satisfaction. I'm going to remember the e-mail trick 

2309

Circle Dock / Re: Circle Dock on FreeDownloadaDay.com

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 10:09 PM »

Doh! I dropped by here to post about the FreeDownloadaDay feature and you've beaten me to it... by 7 hours! The shame! The horror!

Congratulations to VideoInPicture, though 

2310

Living Room / Re: 10 Things Your IT Department Won't Tell You

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 10:01 PM »

Interesting reads (both the original article and the rebuttal). Thanks for posting it 

2311

General Software Discussion / Re: Large Freeware Links Site

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 06:57 PM »

Yeah, I know... Where's the smiley that shows my looking sheepish and staring at my feet?!

-Darwin (September 08, 2008, 05:57 PM)

We'll tell you.... but not for another 3 years 

-cranioscopical (September 08, 2008, 06:08 PM)

 

2312

Living Room / Re: Invertebrate Animals Survive Vacuum and Cosmic Radiation

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 06:36 PM »

That is SERIOUSLY cool! Thanks for the link Ehtyar, I would have missed it otherwise 

2313

General Software Discussion / Re: Yet another Hotkey app!

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 05:59 PM »

Ah, there is a silver lining to what has turned out to be an embarrassing episode! Glad that it helped you out, yksyks! Thanks for the pointer to HotkeyP as well, I hadn't heard of that one before 

2314

General Software Discussion / Re: Large Freeware Links Site

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 05:57 PM »

Darwin stop digging nonsense! You don't need to dig a 3 year old topic to tell Zaine he rocks, everyone knows that!

-jgpaiva (September 08, 2008, 04:34 PM)

Yeah, I know... Where's the smiley that shows my looking sheepish and staring at my feet?!

2315

Living Room / Re: Microsoft Office 12's new XML format

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 05:57 PM »

with Microsoft supporting ODF as a native file format for Office in the next service pack!

-zridling (September 08, 2008, 05:31 PM)

Drat! I'd forgotten about that... That really changes the complexion of the thing, doesn't it 

2316

Living Room / Re: 32-bit Windows and the dreaded (and misunderstood) 4GB RAM limit

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 05:54 PM »

I would expect you to have 4Gb - 512Gb of video RAM = 3.5Gb visible to Windows - so the question is where has the other half a gig gone?

-Carol Haynes (September 08, 2008, 04:10 PM)

My thinking exactly!

What other devices have you got that might use mapped memory? Check you device manager and check for memory mapped devices and see what has gobbled up you new memory!

Right - I'll check this out... AFAIK, there shouldn't be anything else using mapped memory. However, I am *guessing* that my ethernet cards, sound card (which is integrated), keyboard, touchpad, built-in webcam, may be contributing to this. I'll take a look when I get a chance (I'm on my XP machine at the moment).

From what I read (and its been a while so I may be wrong) enabling PAE in 32-bit XP doesn't actually do anything at all.

This is more or less my take on it as well. Once again - I've seen a lot of conflicting reports. The people I trust say it's a waste of time though (can't remember who those people are, off-hand).

Thanks for taking the time to answer, Carol, and everyone else.

2317

Living Room / 32-bit Windows and the dreaded (and misunderstood) 4GB RAM limit

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 03:57 PM »

OK, cards on the table: the peon that can't understand the 4GB RAM limit is writing this post. 'Nuff said. What I'd like an answer to, if anyone cares to take a crack at it, is whether or not my computer will have access to 4GB of RAM (even if Windows can't see it). I've seen conflicting comments on this issue, hence my lack of comprehension. I'm hoping a hardware guru like f0dder can enlighten me a bit...

FWIW I could not resist a 2GB Kingston DDR2 SODDIM for $35. I have a Vista notebook that came with 512MB of dedicated graphics memory and 3GB of RAM (one 2GB SODDIM and one 1GB SODDIM). I swapped out the 1GB chip and put the new Kingston stick in and rebooted. Windows Customer Experience (or whatever it's called) reports that 4GB of RAM are installed. System Properties and Task Manager both report 3070MB... I had hoped I'd be one of those lucky people that gets 3.25 or even 3.5 GB of recognised RAM. C'est la vie. Unless there's a compelling reason to stick with 4GB of RAM in this machine (like it'll still be benefiting me in the background), I'll swap the new 2GB stick out. Coincidentally, I have a friend staying with us for two weeks with an XP notebook that takes DDR2 and it's only got a gig of RAM. 2.5GB of RAM should give XP wings!

Oh, one other thing. Enabling PAE on a 32-bit system - good idea or bad idea. Discuss.

My gut says bad idea, but I'd love to hear other opinions.

Darwin quits the field with apologies for a rambling and incoherent post...

2318

General Software Discussion / Re: What's the best image-"framer"?

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 03:29 PM »

From the outer track shareware3 is trying to take over! What will be the end of this exciting race? Stay tuned!

-Curt (September 08, 2008, 02:29 PM)

2319

Site/Forum Features / Re: Lonely posts on the forum?

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 03:27 PM »

Smarty-pants! I didn't even think to look up there... Thanks for the tip - that's even easier than using a bookmark/favourite 

2320

General Software Discussion / Re: What's the best image-"framer"?

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 02:12 PM »

I don't know Curt. Have you considered shareware as an alternative 

2321

General Software Discussion / Re: Yet another Hotkey app!

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 02:12 PM »

What, Darwin?! You on some sort of mission to reply to all the orphaned topics out there!?

-TucknDar (September 08, 2008, 01:45 PM)

Busted...

I gave it up because I realised (after about 15 posts - I'm a quick study) that I was replying to posts that really didn't require any reply, either because they are so out of date or because... well.. they just don't need replies 

2322

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 01:07 PM »

Welcome to DC, gexecutor and Shook 

2323

General Software Discussion / Re: AntiVirus with decent anti-spyware (realtime) detection

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 01:06 PM »

Awesome! Thank you for posting that, dantheman  I'm downloading it myself as I write this.

2324

Site/Forum Features / Re: Lonely posts on the forum?

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 11:43 AM »

Good thinking! I've bookmarked the Lonely Posts page, though, and will trawl through it occasionally looking for forgotten gems that await replies.

2325

General Software Discussion / Re: Forum 2.0 Suggestion

« Last post by Darwin on September 08, 2008, 10:35 AM »

Excellent