Recent Posts

32076

Living Room / Re: Is it safe to try new freeware?

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2006, 03:09 AM »

your advice about running a program like total uninstall is good, as is keeping backups.  i like the idea of a checklist:

before installing and testing software you are not 10000% convinced you want to keep installed:
1) update your antivirus definitions
2) make sure you have a firewall installed and running
3) run an uninstaller type program to take a snapshot of your installations
4) make a backup of your computer
5) install program, reboot if advised too (i.e. dont ignore this)
6) test program thoroughly
7) uninstall promptly if you dont like it (rather than wait until 10 more programs are installed on top of it).  reboot if advised too.

alternatively, if you have a virtual machine: just install and play to see if its something you want on your real pc.

ps. because of all the steps involved, especially #4, i like to test programs in batches, right after i do my monthly backup of my computer.

32077

Living Room / Re: Is it safe to try new freeware?

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2006, 02:59 AM »

I've been told running new programs on a virtual machine also works well.

cliff i consider this to be THE most important tool for people who test software a lot.
to my mind it is really the safest way to test software.

there are also some sandbox tools discussed recently on the forum: https://www.donation...76.msg22472#msg22472

personally i am wary of these apps that try to protect programs from altering file system and registry, and/or cleaning up afterwards; i just worry that it's hard to do so reliably and without interfering with real functionality.

by far i'd still say that a virtual machine is the most surefire and painless way to do it, just click a button to reset the machine to the state it was in before you installed, and no worry of it messing with your real computer.

it's also increasingly reasonable to actually buy a spare pc (but a super cheap old laptop?) and test software on that.

32078

General Software Discussion / What's your favorite computer game from when you were young?

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2006, 01:27 AM »

We were talking on the irc channel about our favorite computer games from our childhoods.

all you young kids can just sit back and read this thread to see how games used to look, when there was no such thing as a first person shooter.

my girlfriend and i loved the lucasarts graphic adventure games and used to play them a lot.
our two favorites:
http://en.wikipedia..../Day_of_the_Tentacle
http://en.wikipedia...._LeChuck%27s_Revenge

32079

Best E-mail Client / Re: opera deserves a real try

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2006, 01:12 AM »

however, it should be said that 90% of allen's emails are between him and his other personalities, so i'm not sure if they should count. 

32080

General Software Discussion / Re: Searching a good Screenrecorder

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2006, 01:07 AM »

not only that but wink may even be superior if your desire is to not record a movie live, but rather manually make one from static screenshots.

32081

Post New Requests Here / Re: DONE: a better PowerDimmer screensaver alternative?

« Last post by mouser on April 15, 2006, 12:47 AM »

report on 1.4:

the effect is really great here on multimon.

when its configured to stop on mouse move, it stops right away despite my best effort to test it without moving mouse. i think this must be a bug.

it uses 99% cpu while dimming, but then changes to no cpu usage at end.  this is acceptable but not ideal.  i wonder if you aren't stepping through dimming levels much more then you have to be.. in other words, maybe a slighlty less smooth dimming transition would look identical but not use much cpu?

32082

General Software Discussion / Re: Boot optimisation software

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 11:43 PM »

just remember, that like cleaning your registry, such attempts at optimization can frequently lead to situations where something might stop working and you don't notice it's stopped working for a few days and then you can't remember what you disabled and you find yourself confused and distressed.

so just take notes about what you do and treat carefully.

32083

Living Room / Re: talking cats

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 03:43 PM »

i love the black and white crazy cats at the end 

32084

BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Features being considered..

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 02:16 PM »

hahah, redhat i meant.

32085

BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Features being considered..

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 01:49 PM »

redhate, you should be able to add any browser, just add an entry for it in the config text file.

one thing i am going to try to add however is autodetection of browsers, which should make it easier.

32086

BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Features being considered..

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 01:01 PM »

great idea - i should be able to add that next week along with some minor improvements.

32087

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Delete double lines (all but the first) in a text file

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 12:12 PM »

finally some perl on the site! 
it's about time.

welcome to the site DanD, glad to have you here.

32088

Living Room / Re: forum suggestion

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 09:15 AM »

didn't even know such an option existed.. i'll look for it.

32089

Dr.Windows / Re: Dr.Windows Dialogs - Add Yours!

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 09:14 AM »

hehehe

might be fun to do another release if we can think of new features that might be wanted.

post any custom dialogs you might make so they can be added !

32090

General Software Discussion / Re: Paessler Site Inspector has moved to freeware

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 09:13 AM »

nice find!

32091

General Software Discussion / Re: Searching a good Screenrecorder

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 08:13 AM »

ah i see, so its timed frame capture mode, i understand now.

32092

General Software Discussion / I want a Freeware Utility to ... 300+ common problems solved.

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 07:58 AM »

This is a nice clever list arranging programs by tasks

http://www.econsulta...utilities/index.html



from http://www.furl.net/furledPopular.jsp

32093

General Software Discussion / Re: Searching a good Screenrecorder

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 07:36 AM »

thanks very much for the report and samples wr975! very very helpful.

i should say i havent tried wink 2.0, but last time i tried it it wasn't good at all at producing smooth flowing movies automatically (or at least i didnt see how to do it).  my memory is i had to tell it when to snap a screenshot. this new result you are demonstrating seems to suggest that it can make a nice video movie now, which is a huge improvement.  unless i was missing something before. which is possible.

thanks again for the samples, really helpful.

32094

BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Beta Testers Requested

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 05:30 AM »

sorry i should have posted a follow up -
this program left beta a while ago and is now fully available for download, though new feature requests are welcome:
https://www.donation...owsertray/index.html

32095

General Software Discussion / Re: Searching a good Screenrecorder

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 02:32 AM »

wow, congratulations to the wink developer(s), thats great news 

32096

General Software Discussion / Email Syndication Services - nice article

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 02:09 AM »

I'm about as big an RSS advocate as you'll find on the Web, yet even I recognize that a lot of people don't use RSS - and until Microsoft embeds it into Outlook are unlikely to. Although it's early days for both Zookoda and Yutter, they look to be very promising email notification services for blogs.
Read more...

http://www.readwriteweb.com/

32097

Living Room / Website for people to arrange (legal) trading of stuff

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 01:38 AM »

You pay them 1 dollar per trade, and find people to trade your stuff with.

http://www.zunafish.com/

from nytimes.com

32098

Older Newsletters / Re: DonationCoder.com Article - One Year Report on our Experiments with Donationware

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 12:26 AM »

Thanks for your support 4vrqrisPt.

Now that we have the microdonation system set up we are going to make soem more changes to make it easier for donationware authors to make a home here.

ps.
does your forum name have a meaning?

32099

Living Room / Re: this is the first site I ever donated to... :)

« Last post by mouser on April 14, 2006, 12:24 AM »

welcome to the site sugar, glad to have you here 

32100

General Software Discussion / Re: Synchronisation tools

« Last post by mouser on April 13, 2006, 05:45 PM »

you know the use of the term "sync" in Eóin's post is somewhat confusing.
2 very different kinds of programs are being talked about here:
1) a sync tool for synchronizing directoris
2) an incremental versioned backup tool

even though Eóin mentions wanting a "sync tool", his description is really for an incremental versioned backup tool:

I’d better explain what I’m looking for first, I want a neat way to backup my programming projects, my ideal tool would perform incremental backups with a possibility to rollback.

in this case, you really want to look at that backup review and section and look for a backup tool not a sync tool.