Recent Posts

2726

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 10, 2009, 05:09 AM »

Damn - I am going to have to up my count - I have already slipped from 2nd place ...

2727

General Software Discussion / Re: Another 'Lifetime' license bites the dust

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 10, 2009, 05:06 AM »

Outdoor clothing (eg. Goretex jackets) used to come with lifetime warranties (and some still do) but often the lifetime is "the lifetime of the product" - ie. if it is worn out, rather than a manufacturing or materials failure, then there is no warranty.

Having said that when I was working as a professional outdoor instructor and needed clothing to keep me dry all day, everyday in February weather I purchased a Marmot jacket (at the time it cost over £400) with a lifetime warranty. After 4 years it started to leak so I sent it back to Marmot (without much hope) but they sent me a brand new top of the range jacket almost by return of post (list price over £450) and I am still using that one! About 9 years later my £400 purchase that seemed excessive at the time now seems good value for money!

2728

General Software Discussion / Re: windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 09, 2009, 06:29 PM »

The blog page has now removed all reference to 'come back this afternoon'

2729

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 07:28 PM »

I don't know but over the years I have purchased numerous hard drives and optical drives bot OEM and retail boxed and I have yet to receive a cable or screws. The only difference I can see with retail boxes for optical drives is that you usually get a copy of Nero (now it is usually the lite version and a version out of date and restricted to that make/model of drive) an for hard drives you might get a utility disk and a longer warranty.

2730

Living Room / 10 reason to deploy Vista (and 10 why not to)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 07:24 PM »

Interesting articles:

http://windowsitpro....y-windows-vista.html

http://windowsitpro....y-windows-vista.html

2731

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 06:41 PM »

True motherboards generally come with cables. Not necessarily the best quality though!

As for other devices - even retail DVD drives and hard drives rarely come with any cables - or even fixing screws (which is plain mean as every drive needs screws to install it and it isn't necessarily an upgrade where you can reuse the old ones).

2732

Living Room / Re: Sound Recorder freeware - anyone?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 06:38 PM »

Yes I added the two audio plugins to the plugin directory but there still didn't seem to be any way in the main app to create an Audio CD. The only option seemed to be drag and drop and when you did it just created a stanard CD-ROM with whatever files you put there. The website says it should convert MP3 and produce standard Audio CDs but I couldn't see any way to acheive this.

Re. ImgBurn ... I use it all the time for most things but producing an Audio CD is somewhat geeky. First you have to go to the website to find the tutorial how to do it. Then you have to:

Create a CUE file with the music files you want on the CD and set the inter track gaps that you want
Then you burn the CUE file to a CD

This isn't terribly difficult to do but it isn't exactly obvious and trying to explain to someone who wants burning software just to produce Audio CDs seems a bit counterintuitive. Add to that I wanted a standalone and I don't see ImgBurn as an easy option for school kids from a teacher who doesn't know how to run ImgBurn from a command line with command line switches.

2733

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 01:14 PM »

The motherboard websites alwways seem to have lists of memory that have been tested and guaranteed compatible but there are a number if issues:

• they were compatible at the time of testing but manufacturers regularly change their sources of RAM chips and so what was true in the past isn't necessarily true of the future
• they regularly only test smaller RAM modules (relative to the board capacity)
• they are often obscure or difficult to obtain modules
• they never seem to bother with popular and reliable brands as much as the concentrate on the obscure

further to all that lot Corsair and Crucial both make hi spec memory that generally has no compatibility problems and are guaranteed for life. If it doesn't work send it back! For Crucial memory use their memory picker and then it is guaranteed compatible.

2734

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 10:55 AM »

I don't know because it isn't the same model that I have (mine is the pre-HDMI model). There is a more recent review that speciafically say it does support 1920x1200 (and mine certainly does).

The reviewer you quoted seems to be the odd one out in the list of reviews. If it is anything like mine brightness certainly isn't an issue (in fact you may want to tone it down a bit!).

WRT pixels - each manufacturer has a policy of a 'permissible' number of dead pixels before the product is considered faulty. I am not sure what BenQ's policy is. In theory you could get an LCD monitor from any manufacturer with a couple of dead pixels and not have any recourse to warranty. Having said that I have had two BenQ monitors and neither have had any dead pixels and if one had arrived with even one dead pixel I would have returned it immediately for refund or replacement. UK law allows any one buying via 'distance selling' a cooling off period of 7 days after receipt of goods during which you can return the goods for any reason for a refund (except for perishable items and media like CDs and DVDs - in which case they can only be returned if they are faulty or have not been unsealed).

2735

Living Room / Re: Sound Recorder freeware - anyone?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 10:31 AM »

Sorry being dense - how do you set what type of disc to write in AmoK - I can't seem to see how you make and AudioCD - it just seems to create a CD-ROM ??

2736

Living Room / Re: Apple Wheel macbook - revolutionary

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 09:57 AM »

I think the next stage is just a surgically implanted wheel on the forehead ...

2737

Living Room / Re: Sound Recorder freeware - anyone?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 08:33 AM »

TFB and IR look quite similar in what they do.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions - I am discovering all sorts of new freebies today

2738

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 08:10 AM »

It was meant to be a tongue in cheek comment but it does say something about MS that they are aiming to get Windows 7 out in record time and extending XP SALES to the point that there could be an almost seemless transition for most users avoiding Vista completely.

2739

Living Room / Re: Sound Recorder freeware - anyone?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 08:07 AM »

Burrrn looks nice and simple but does need installing.

I am looking at InfraRecord Portable - which looks useful.

I was tempted by ImgBurn in potable mode but it is a bit on the geeky side ... though it does give some control on gaps between tracks and CD Text etc.!

2740

Living Room / Re: Sound Recorder freeware - anyone?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 06:49 AM »

Thanks Tomos - for a media centre approach it is probably just as easy to use Windows Media Player isn't it?

2741

Living Room / Re: Sound Recorder freeware - anyone?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 06:28 AM »

Given that Wavosaur doesn't have a CD burner - any suggestions for a simple freeware Audio CD Burner - preferably portable.

I have downloaded CDBurnerXP and that works fine but it is a bit complicated and needs to be installed.

2742

Living Room / Re: Sound Recorder freeware - anyone?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 06:06 AM »

Streamosaur Maybe and Wavosaur for editing.

They both look nice - and have the advantage of being completely portable

Software to record in MP3 format

Thanks - I new I had seen this somewhere.

Having said that I like the fact you can record direct to Wav in Wavosaur - though I am sure some of the other options will do that too.

2743

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 05:04 AM »

According to Windows Secrets the new beta is set to expire around 1st August encouraging speculation that Windows 7 will be released this year. Given that MS have extended the distribution of OEM WinXP until the 30th May it seems that even MS have given up and finally admitted that Vista has been a bad experience for everyone

2744

Living Room / Sound Recorder freeware - anyone?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 08, 2009, 04:57 AM »

A friends in the languages department of a local school has asked me if I know of any audio recording software as kids are now submitting oral exercises and tests by MP3 on CD and it would be nice to be able to offer them some software to download to make the process easier and more effective.

Anyone got any ideas for a freeware audio recording package?

I know windows comes with a basic utility and many sound cards include some basic stuff.

Anyone know anything a bit better that will allow recording from a mic and perhaps allow some drop-in editing and ideally output MP3 format (and if possible burn recordings to CD).

It doesn't have to be a soundforge (but something like a simplified version of that would be nice ;-)).

2745

General Software Discussion / Re: The Monkeys Have Hit The Button

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 07, 2009, 08:20 PM »

That's just ridiculous - XP is still the most used OS and Vista is basically dead in the water with Win 7 on the horizon.

2746

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 07, 2009, 06:59 PM »

Glad I am not alone. I now have 3 Seagate external USB drives absolutely full and they were meant to be used for system backups. (To be fair one of the drives has one backup on it!)

2747

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 07, 2009, 05:40 PM »

A better way of doing it is to update the version number in the add-on (just rename the xpi installer file to a zip extension, unzip it, finsd the relevant text file with the version numbers and extend the life of the add-on to the current version of FF you are using, then zip it all up again, change it back to an xpi file and install it).

Alternatively install MrTech add-on and it adds the option to Make Compatible in the extensions context menu. This doesn't require that the about:config is tweaked to ignore compatibility issues.

2748

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor for PDFs: recommendations, please?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 07, 2009, 04:03 PM »

Why is Evernote2 missing FF ? (And NetSnippets if it comes to that).

OK the add-ins may say they are incompatible but it is worth giving them a try any way (just switch of compatibility testing in about:config). I bet you find both work just fine (I know Evernote 2.2 does).

2749

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox not safe at all

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 07, 2009, 03:07 PM »

It is an interesting approach to security though - which apps have know issues? Surely it is the unknown issues that are the problem!

2750

Living Room / Re: Please help me build my new computer, DC!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 07, 2009, 01:22 PM »

Don't do it - if it is anything like my experience before you know it you will fill it up on your old system and then you'll have to go and buy another one