Recent Posts

2976

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 29, 2008, 02:29 PM »

The trouble with OCR in Paperport/OmniPage/TextBridge (they are all the same as far as i know) is that it is so inaccurate. Unless you are prepared to spend a sizeable chunk of your life manually OCRing PDF files and going through all the errors it generates the indexed versions will be less than useful.

The last version of OmniPage I bought was 'much improved' according to Nuance. Having skipped umpteen versions I figured it was worth another go but it was just as crap as ever. As far as I can tell the only things Nuance add to new versions are ever more annoying activation systems.

Feel better having got that off my chest.

PS: I sent that version of OmniPage back for a refund and vowed never to bother with OCR again.

2977

General Software Discussion / Re: MSI S260 touchpad ?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 29, 2008, 07:24 AM »

Does it not have a model number on the touchpad when you dismantle the laptop?

You could try emailing MSI and Synaptics for details.

2978

General Software Discussion / Re: The Vista Immersion Experiment

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 27, 2008, 08:48 AM »

I can't remember what the article (or the number) was called but I seem to remember an issue in an MS KB article on resumption from hibernation and USB. Might be worth a quick search.

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General Software Discussion / Re: The Vista Immersion Experiment

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 27, 2008, 07:28 AM »

At least you found it - but it is a bit strange.

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General Software Discussion / Re: The Vista Immersion Experiment

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 27, 2008, 07:06 AM »

Have you installed specific motherboard drivers or are you relying on the Vista built in drivers? If you have only installed Vista setup drivers for the the mobo try going to the manufacturers website and downloading the latest motherboard drivers.

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General Software Discussion / Re: The Vista Immersion Experiment

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 27, 2008, 05:41 AM »

Oh, there's a single unknown device listed in my device manager, and I haven't been able to find any useful information about it - it's located on "Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Embedded Controller", and it's Instance Path is ACPI\ACPIHIDMAPPER\5&15D725F4&0 . It's Parent is ACPI\PNP0C09\1 . AFAIK I have all drivers installed, and googling for the ID hasn't brought up anything useful.

-f0dder (October 27, 2008, 05:27 AM)

Isn't this normally either part of the motherboard drivers or installed by Windows during setup when the motherboard/BIOS type is detected?

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 25, 2008, 04:33 AM »

You could always make a new avatar with as many boxes as you like 

2983

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2008, 03:18 PM »

Just out of curiosity, could somebody please tell me what the little gold, pink, and blue boxes beneath our names mean? I've got a pretty good idea based on who has what, but does anybody know exactly what they represent?

Mouser?

-40hz (October 24, 2008, 02:11 PM)

I know it sounds death defying but try hovering over each one 

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2008, 09:47 AM »

I am using 'waffles' as a verb (as in waffling) --- eg. someone runs for their county ... someone is running up a hill.

Someone who waffles never gets to the point and goes on and on and on and on ... (get the point?)

I also figured it was a nice pun for the north American contingent who eat waffles by the bucket load. Personally I love waffles (savoury and sweet versions) but I have never bought a waffle iron (though maybe a I should and then I could do a quick cookery column )

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General Software Discussion / Re: Spam filtering

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2008, 09:43 AM »

Yep - or use forwarders to pump email to the gmail account.

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Living Room / Re: The big 5000 !

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2008, 04:16 AM »

OK shock and awe ...

The truth is out - I talk too much.

For many on this forum this will come as no surprise but I thought it would be worth marking this as my 5000th post

From now on I will let others do the talking more ... (and if you believe that boy your gullible).

I may have talked a lot but I am still at less than 50% of Mouser's total posts so I have some way to got to catch up and others are now hard on my heels (come on Darwin and f0dder you can catch up) and KenR has started more topics than me so my work is not yet complete!

Anyway as I hit the big 5 (in my big 5 year coincidentally) I would like to thank everyone for making this such a fun and happy place to be and express my gratitude to you all for put up with my vague and frequent rants and rambles.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Spam filtering

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 24, 2008, 04:06 AM »

I second Google Mail. Fantastic spam filtering - virtually 0 false poitives (I think I have had about 3 since I started using it) and similar level of spam detection.

Best solution I have found fullstop - and it is maintenace free

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General Software Discussion / Re: Help me with MS Word styles

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 23, 2008, 05:31 AM »

I suppose it is logical to have the list styles linked to the paragraph text style because for most people if they update the font or size in the paragraph style of a report they would also want their lists updated to match. It is more confusing though if you actually want to change the list fonts!

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Living Room / Re: keep xp, put vista on 2nd partition on a raid 0 drive - will i regret it?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 22, 2008, 04:45 PM »

http://support.micro....com/kb/307654/en-us

Make sure you use an original Windows XP CD to install it and make sure it is at the same service pack level (if not slipstream a new installation CD)

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General Software Discussion / Re: Help me with MS Word styles

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 22, 2008, 04:44 PM »

I just tried to repeat my test from above on a friends laptop running W2003 and it worked fine.

I created a short list the way I wanted it and then high-lighted it and clicked on Style > More... > New Style and gave it a name. I could then apply that style to any text I wanted.

Am I missing something?

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General Software Discussion / Re: Help me with MS Word styles

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 22, 2008, 03:58 PM »

I don't use Word 2003 any more but Word 2007 certainly supports 1-click list formatting.

For example:

2992

Living Room / Re: keep xp, put vista on 2nd partition on a raid 0 drive - will i regret it?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 22, 2008, 02:00 PM »

I have XP and Vista on a single drive in my laptop. Having said that I have it set to automatically boot XP on startup and I rarely bother with Vista (unless I need to look how something works for a client).

As others have said the only issue is the replacing of the boot loader. Also if you boot into Vista then the system drive is always alloacted to drive C: so your XP partition will have a different drive letter under Vista - but it doesn't really make any difference.

Before you install Vista install the XP recovery console into Windows XP that way when Vista is installed you always have a quick way to remove it if you want.

2993

Living Room / Re: Thoughts on switching to IPv6

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 21, 2008, 06:14 PM »

I don't really understand why they couldn't simply add an extra number to IPv4 addresses - say a country code. Existing users/companies could have a default code of 0 (implied by a 4 figure IP) and then new users/companies could have an extra number allocated.

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 21, 2008, 03:52 PM »

It can't be as fast - but if you are using a word processor to write a one page letter over fast broadband it isn't going to be a problem. Now try and write a book with illustrations and you'll see how crap it will be.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Magic Jack Phone ?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 21, 2008, 04:53 AM »

Jack Daniels - magic

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 21, 2008, 03:20 AM »

I am not too happy about the idea of a webcentric OS on my computer. There are a number of issues including connectivity (there are still loads of people in my area on dial up because broadband is unavailable to them, plus what about the cost of mobile broadband - in the UK it is still ridiculously expensive) and application quality.It is impressive what you can do with some online apps but they are nowhere near ready to replace desktop apps, and what about large scale apps like video and photo editing?

It seems to me that as media quality improves exponentially (in terms of digital photography, video and audio) and the file sizes get larger the web will be unable to cope with dealing with such files.

It is going to take a large scale change too in the ISP infrastructure as currently most ISPs offer fast download speeds on broadband (though noticeably worse in the UK than the rest of Europe) but upload speeds are painfully slow. I presume this is to stop consumers realistically hosting websites and web applications in their homes but it also means that any sort of data transfer up to an application site is currently impractical unless you have a lot of time to waste and drink a lot of coffee!

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: ConceptDraw MindMap 'v5'

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 17, 2008, 06:43 PM »

Thanks - it looks interesting (and by the way you seem to be able to upgrade to version 6 if you want to so this provides a cheap way to get version 6).

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Living Room / Re: Digital Music Purchases - Downloads or Ripped CD's?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 17, 2008, 07:57 AM »

Edit the poll to say both I usually do both.

-Josh (October 17, 2008, 03:51 AM)

Edited poll to include purchase both! Rich person you ...

Note if you want to change your vote in the poll (now there are new options) you can do so. Just click remove vote and then vote again.

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Living Room / Re: Digital Music Purchases - Downloads or Ripped CD's?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 17, 2008, 03:44 AM »

Wherever possible I still buy CDs. I have eclectic tastes (classic rock, heavy metal, more melodic rock music and my first  love is classical music) and have found that there are almost always issues with classical music you download - either quality is not especially good or mutli-movement works where the parts flow together don't work well. I did buy some from iTunes but always felt unsatisfied my purchase and many have been subsequently purchased. Quite a few have been returned as faulty for a refund.

I know that there are legal non-DRM sources now but most of the well known artists are still sold in DRMed form and I have been stung too often - and have got fed up having to write to umpteen sellers for permission to listen to my music after reinstalling windows.

Normal music albums are probably OK to download but there is still something niceabout a physical product - and much of the stuff I buy is often cheaper from Amazon on a disc. I rarely buy individual tracks (I suppose I am too anal!).

There are loads of ripped CDs on my PC but to be honest I rarely listen to them and still; grab a CD when I want to listen to music. They are also more flexible - in car I have a multi disc changer which is ideal for long journeys. MP3 players in the car are pretty useless because you can't change track or album while you are driving.

(I have edited the poll to add an extra option)

3000

Living Room / Re: HELP !!! Outlook corruption

« Last post by Carol Haynes on October 16, 2008, 02:53 PM »

zwr, it would have been polite to mention that you are related to that product and how. No body really minds people promoting their own products provided they are up front about it.

Having said that I have looked at AOR in the past myself when looking for a solution but at $250 you would have to be damn sure there was lots of missing data that you couldn't live without.