Recent Posts

24076

Developer's Corner / Free Microsoft Coding Tools For Students (Visual Studio and more)

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2008, 12:53 PM »

Good news for students wanting to develop on MS Windows platform:

How would you like a free copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008? How about the entire Microsoft Expression Studio? Not enough...... how about Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and more?   For once, something that sounds too good to be true really is this good and really is true. Starting today (or soon in some areas), students worldwide will be able to download our professional development and design tools for free! It's called DreamSpark and it is upon us.

DreamSpark is simple, it's all about giving students Microsoft professional-level developer and design tools at no charge so you can chase your dreams and create the next big breakthrough in technology - or just get a head start on your career.

Who can get this right now?
We are kicking this off in 11 countries/regions, giving DreamSpark to millions of students in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. If you are not residing in one of the countries listed keep checking back, we will be adding more countries throughout the year.

What do I have to do to get this software? Not much really, just select a product and follow the steps below.

Sign In with your Windows Live ID. If you don't have one, go get one here. Pretty basic stuff.

Get verified as a student. The system is linked to schools and organizations around the world that can confirm student status. Simply choose your country and school, enter your info and hit submit.

Download your products. Now remember these are professional tools. This means they are pretty big files so make sure you have the bandwidth and space to bring them to your machine. We support the latest versions of both Internet Explorer and Firefox for your download.

https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

from http://www.techcrunc...v-software-for-free/

24077

Dr.Windows / Re: New message: bug detected

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2008, 02:40 AM »

I have to admit it, i laughed 
I'll move it to that thread.

24078

Living Room / Re: Hardware advice sought... Notebook power supply problem

« Last post by mouser on February 19, 2008, 12:52 AM »

if you bought an extended warranty, there is a VERY good chance that they are just going to fix it for you quickly without question.  so stop worrying.  you just might not want to volunteer that you dropped it.

24079

General Software Discussion / Re: Enso launcher/words is a must for everyone!

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 11:27 PM »

No reason to remove it, but i could merge it in with another Enso thread like this one:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=11865.0

As the author of Find and Run Robot (FARR) I think it's healthy to discuss all alternatives.  The only thing i do want to point out is that we've recently seen some amazing FARR plugins written by members here on the forum, so one nice thing about using FARR and being a DC member is that there is a very good chance if you have a feature request you'll see it come to life

24080

General Software Discussion / Request from Blueberry for BB Flashback v2 Beta Testers

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 09:14 PM »

We've had a very long running and popular discount for donationcoder members on BB FlashBack,  a screencasting program that got good reviews in our 2005 review of such programs.

Since that review, Camtasia (a competing product) has come out with some very nice new features (but remains very expensive).  Well now it's time for BB FlashBack to get a major update it seems.

The people at Blueberry, the company that makes BB FlashBack, has asked me if there might be DonationCoder members who would like to help betatest their new version 2 release.. I said I would be happy to find out

Here's the info:

"BB FlashBack is a Windows based screen recording application designed
for creating, editing and publishing screencasts. Previously reviewed by
donation coder, the brand new BB FlashBack 2 is due for early early this
year. In prepairation for this, Blueberry Software is looking for beta
testers who would like to give this new version a try and report any
bugs found. New features include webcam recording, zoom and pan, action
button and a precision sound editing interface. To register interest in
being a beta tester please contact [email protected] giving your
name, location and contact details.

We now have a feature-freeze on FlashBack until after the offical release of
version 2, so what we're mainly looking for is bug reports found in
general-usage testing. Seconardary to this: user feedback on the GUI and
ease of use is welcomed, as if there was something we got a lot of
matching feedback on GUI wise , we'd consider changing it."

So there you have it, send an email to [email protected] and sign up to test it, and give them some constructive feedback!
Let us know what you think too, when the final version comes out.

ps. let them know you are coming from DC.

24081

Living Room / Re: Hardware advice sought... Notebook power supply problem

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 08:59 PM »

nice advice tinjaw 

24082

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Free computer help online/CompuTech (my) programs

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 08:46 PM »

i would encourage all authors of programs that do system work to decide, is your tool ever going to be used by novices who arent computer experts? if so then you have to do everything in your power to make it impossible for them to do harm to their pc.

you are going to set yourself up for some real pain when people start emailing you asking why program X no longer works on their pc because you "cleaned" something like an empty folder from the program when it expects it to be there, etc.

avoid any operation that could break something.

24083

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Free computer help online/CompuTech (my) programs

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 08:43 PM »

and will scan your entire C:\ drive for empty folders and delete them without interaction.

i agree with veign -- this sounds like a very bad idea. likely to cause problems, and with no good reason to do it.
delempty is one of those specialty tools that should only be used by people who really know what they are doing.

24084

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: AnVir - Task manager. Startup manager. Speed up boot time and performance.

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 08:41 PM »

Looks quite nice.

24085

Screenshot Captor / Re: save as PDF problem

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 08:39 PM »

i think understand now..
to confirm, you are using the "File -> Save Copy Of Image As" menu option right?
it may simply be a setting in pdf printing options, let me take a look.

Another option would be that, instead of using the Save to PDF option in screenshot captor,
that you install one of these PDF printer programs and use the Print function from Screenshot Captor to print to the virtual PDF printer which might give you more control.  But i'll see if there is an easy fix for saveas pdf.

24086

Screenshot Captor / Re: Auto-capture in certain interval of time

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 08:20 PM »

from tray menu you can turn it on and off:

24087

Official Announcements / Re: February 2008 Software Drawing Winners

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 08:05 PM »

It's definitely Cody's Rich Uncle, the Capitalist. 
He's the one who funded Cody's trip to space.

24088

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor - request: add caption automatically

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 08:04 PM »

well let me see if i can't add it on the next update --
it's just gotten to the point where the options dialog of things to do "on capture" is getting silly and at this point a little scripting thing would make a lot more sense.

24089

Living Room / Re: Hardware advice sought... Notebook power supply problem

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 07:12 PM »

your thought that it will take a long time to get it repaired under warranty is probably right, but it seems likely that they might repair it and cover it under warranty.  i've not had great experience with getting laptops repaired by company under warranty but eventually they mostly fix things and don't charge you.  rather than re-solder it they may just put in a new motherboard or even just replace your laptop completely.

the manually dissassemble and solder route sounds much more likely to result in disaster to me
might be worth trying if it was a spare pc you don't need or could afford to replace if it goes haywire but i don't think i'd chance it with an expensive pc i need.

24090

Living Room / Re: Ralf Maximus - MIA?

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 06:50 PM »

I heard from Ralf: He's ok, dealing with some issues in life, and will be back soon. 

24091

General Software Discussion / Re: Should I get my new laptop with hard drive partitioned?

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 06:46 PM »

some people saying having multiple partitions can be faster, though i've never seen any good hard data on it.
personally i think it makes it cleaner and easier to organize things, and a little easier to back up data:

• so you can make a drive image of your C drive to backup your operating system.
• and a backup of your D drive whenever you want to backup your data.

24092

General Software Discussion / Re: Should I get my new laptop with hard drive partitioned?

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 06:23 PM »

for sure ntfs, no one would format a new pc with fat32 these days.

as for partitioning.. some people love to make lots of partitions, some people like having only one.

personally if i had one 120gb hd i would definitely partition it into 2 partitions:

• one partition for the operation system and installed programs.
• one partition for my data files.

with modern partition management software you should be able to change the size of the partitions or merge and split them even after you've been using it for a while, so don't feel like you have to make a decision now and forever live with it.  if it were me i might split it like 40gb C: drive and 80gb D: drive.

far more important than this decision is to make sure you buy an external usb drive so that you can back up an image of your computer after you get it. that will make it easier to always go back to factory clean state if you need to, etc.

24093

Living Room / MOVED: Screenshot Captor - Thanks Mouser

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 03:39 AM »

This topic has been moved to Screenshot Captor.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=12343.0

24094

Screenshot Captor / Re: Screenshot Captor - Thanks Mouser

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 03:38 AM »

so what you want is for it to auto add a visible caption to the image.
this isnt very hard to add though you may be the only person on the planet that wants it.
let me take it under consideration -- it's not that i'm not willing to add it, it's just it may be something better left until i add a more general scripting/plugin support feature.

24095

Screenshot Captor / Re: Noob question

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 03:35 AM »

I see what you are asking now,
Hate to bring bad news, but the "callout balloon" you are talking about is just a clipart image, and so your original procedure is the only way to do it currently.

It would be much nicer if those were dynamic callouts as you want, it's just not something supported yet.

It's always a kind of struggle in my mind between how much image editing should be added to Screenshot Captor, and how much should be done in more powerful image editing programs.

Keep in mind that Screenshot Captor is specifically designed to make it really easy to edit screenshots in external editors while still letting you work on the screenshots from within SC when you want.  So i can only recommend that until those features are added, find a good image editor and configure it so you can quickly call it from SC.

24096

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Definr.com plugin

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 03:15 AM »

nice!!!!!

ps. attention all plugin authors, please attach a screenshot when you post about your plugin, so i can more easily add it to the plugin list page:
https://www.donation...user/findrun/addons/

24097

Living Room / Re: GPLv3 explained

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 02:14 AM »

It's actually fascinating to hear about how v3 features were designed to thwart companies who found loopholes in v2.

24098

Living Room / Re: GPLv3 explained

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 02:07 AM »

very nice find.. it's almost a year old so it might be nice to have a more recent video explanation from an objective person, but regardless it's an interesting video to watch!

24099

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New Script FARR Plugin: Clock

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 12:22 AM »

this is close to my request here, i wonder if it could be added:
https://www.donation...71.msg86321#msg86321

i think you could add that ability to your plugin if you let the options file provide an OFFSET +- hours for each entry, and a label for each entry so user could search by entry name.  just an idea!

24100

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New Script FARR Plugin: Clock

« Last post by mouser on February 18, 2008, 12:18 AM »

very cool. 
my only suggestion is to not call it cl, and instead maybe "fcl" so it doesnt interfere with normal searching for files that might start with cl.