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3401

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by Darwin on January 16, 2008, 08:38 AM »

mmm+ is good, and I used to use it. Nosh is right, it won't work with Dopus, but I found it very useful with other programmes and, of course, the shell. What prompted me to uninstall it is that its executable is compressed using AsPack - this causes at least one 16-bit programme that I use for work to fail to open under WinXP Pro Sp-2.

3402

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your preferred File Manager

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 11:15 PM »

J-Mac - TC UP (Ultra Prime) is a good "distro" of TC. Belatedly I've realised/discovered that the installer allows you to select which plugins and addons you want to install and which to leave. This means that you can run one installer and set TC up very easily and conveniently. My main beef with TC is that I can never remember how to invoke the context menu... The instructions are somewhere in this thread, I believe...

3403

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 11:11 PM »

PS I had taken the screenshot earlier in the day, hence the highlighted Bulk Rename Here entry. Note, too that clicking to reveal the rest of the "list" adds another 11 entries  , all windows default with the exception of "Sweep with Spy Sweeper" and "Unlocker"...

3404

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 11:08 PM »

  Here's my context menu in Dopus - I gave up on using the "Hide Windows items" feature because I literally wait for minutes for those items to appear when I shift-right click and yet it's instant with "the full Monty". Go figure. Anyway, feast your eyes on this ode to excess:

3405

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Powerpoint shrinker

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 11:05 PM »

What I do is select any graphic, right click on it and select "Format Picture". I select "Compress" in the resulting dialogue and then Apply to: "All pictures in document" and Change resolution to "Web". The other trick is to create a new empty presentation, copy and paste all of the slides from the existing presentation and paste them into the new one and then save with a different file name. This only helps if your client has the Fast Save option selected (it's on by default). Don't know if that will help that much or not. Beyond that, I'm not aware of a ppt one-click shrinker.

Sounds like a good candidate for a coding snack, so you've come to the right place!

3406

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Powerpoint shrinker

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 09:24 PM »

Another excellent resource (at least in my experience) is:

http://pptfaq.com/index.html

see this post in particular for pointers on how to setup first Windows and then Powerpoint for use:

http://pptfaq.com/FAQ00034.htm

3407

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your preferred File Manager

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 09:18 PM »

oops

-wilfrednilsen (January 15, 2008, 07:22 PM)

Amen to that, brother... I have an iBook with 10.2 on it here at home and was helping my dad migrate from OS9 to 10.5 yesterday - I thought I was going to lose my mind trying to find stuff in either version of the Mac OS (ie 9.22 or 10.5). I've been looking at 3rd party File Managers and there are some nice ones out there, it seems. I don't have any links on hand, but I'll investigate and report back... someday  

3408

General Software Discussion / Re: Editor Needed

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 07:30 PM »

Wow! Quite a read - definitely not fuzzy, more like prickly:

Quote from Picc84 at this link: http://paintdotnet.f...viewtopic.php?t=2442

I e-mailed him, and with a quick responce he gave me:

"read the docs you ****** i give full credit to the authors donot email me again"

My original question, was...

"Excuse me, I've recently visited your site, and it looks ODDLY Familyer to a program of the name "Paint.NET" while I see no credit? Can you please direct me to were you give credit to the creator? IF ITS Paint.NET, If not, good luck! with your program!"

3409

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 06:03 PM »

Ah...  Sorry, I definitely missed your point there. I'll have a look at this and see if I can come up with a suggestion. It'll probably be tomorrow, though.

3410

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Textmaker (Softmaker/Ashampoo Office) 2008

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 05:59 PM »

Busted! You're right - the Scansoft option was to embed non-standard fonts. My document only contains Times New Roman. Switching to "embed all fonts" in Scansoft results in a 123kb file. I owe SoftMaker an apology 

3411

Living Room / Re: Laptop hard drive... 5400 or 7200 ?

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 05:56 PM »

Pierre - your parents should have called you "Eve"  Just when I thought it was safe to enter an electronics store, too... 

-Darwin (January 15, 2008, 02:21 PM)

And I do love apples

-PPLandry (January 15, 2008, 03:07 PM)

 

3412

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Textmaker (Softmaker/Ashampoo Office) 2008

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 02:44 PM »

Well... SoftMaker TextMaker (rev. 482) exported a 63kb, 4 page, Word Document to a pdf that is 134kb in size. This is with the "embed only embedable font"s setting applied and at Low (96dpi) quality with auto table of contents generated. I printed the same file from within SoftMaker to Scansoft PDF Creator at medium quality with embed fonts enabled and it produced a pdf of just 16kb in size (complete with TOC). So... the current SoftMaker revision is better than it was, but far from optimized.

3413

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Textmaker (Softmaker/Ashampoo Office) 2008

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 02:31 PM »

Hmm... I'm on revision 482 already, but thanks for directing me to check for updates, Tom! I'm checking out pdf creation now (well, next, actually) and will report back.

3414

Living Room / Re: Laptop hard drive... 5400 or 7200 ?

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 02:21 PM »

Pierre - your parents should have called you "Eve"  Just when I thought it was safe to enter an electronics store, too... 

3415

Living Room / Re: Nice little write-up of DonationCoder in usa today "tech_space" blog

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 12:28 PM »

Fabulous, Mouser! This is the first time that I can remember such mainstream (ie outside of magazine's devoted to PC's and/or software) exposure.

COOL! 

Darwin (cussed in Courtenay)

EDIT: corrected spelling of my hometown 

3416

Living Room / Re: Laptop hard drive... 5400 or 7200 ?

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 12:21 PM »

Darwin, did you get permission from your wife to buy that second monitor?

-Lashiec (January 15, 2008, 09:28 AM)

Yes! But I didn't bother... I have an Intel integrated graphics card in an old Centrino notebook and I decided that for now I'm not interested in splitting the 64MB of shared memory between the two displays. I mean, I'm sure it would work, but I figure there's not much point getting an expensive secondary monitor until I've verified that it will work! I'm too lazy to go 10 minutes up the street and plug my friend's Samsung monitor into my notebook to see what happens.

3417

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 12:17 PM »

OK here's the setting from the "Settings" - "Preferences" dialogue:

3418

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 12:13 PM »

Yup -Tomos is correct. However, NB that I had the context menu item in both DOpus 8 and now in Dopus 9. The option is actually to HIDE Windows Explorer items in the Dopus context menu. I wonder if you have inadvertently enabled this feature, J-Mac? Good catch, Tom  - I'd forgotten about it. To check for this, J-Mac, hold down the shift key when you right click an item in Dopus. If BRU Context entry appears, you'll know that you have disabled Windows Explorer context menu items. I'll be back in a jiffy to tell you where to look for this setting.

3419

General Software Discussion / Re: FeedDemon going free

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 12:09 PM »

I'm running 2.6 and like it - the GUI is "prettier" - but the resource usage is as bad as ever. It'll consume over 200MB of RAM and 90% of the CPU while everything updates. As noted, though, this is only an issue DURING the updating of feeds and doesn't last long. The RAM isn't a big deal to me because I've got 2GB to play with and usually have LOTS free no matter what is going on.

3420

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 09:33 AM »

That's interesting J-Mac. As I stated above, I'm using Dopus 9 and use it to replace Windows Explorer. I do see Bulk Rename Here in the Dopus context menu. FWIW I'm running XP Pro Sp-2 and can't think of anything that I've done to enable Bulk Rename's context menu 'entry' to display, other than simply running the installer.

3421

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Textmaker (Softmaker/Ashampoo Office) 2008

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 09:30 AM »

One thing I'd like to know is if DataMaker - which is supposed to be released to beta January 2008 and as a full release February 2008 is going to be part of a service pack or available as an upgrade? I had really hoped that it was going to make it into the final release of 2008...

3422

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by Darwin on January 15, 2008, 12:36 AM »

Hi Jim - yes, I do see that in DOpus 9... to get it there  you have to download the installer that specifies that it has it. If you look at the download page, you'll note:



Download the appropriate version with installer and run it and you should be good to go!

3423

Living Room / Re: Laptop hard drive... 5400 or 7200 ?

« Last post by Darwin on January 14, 2008, 06:42 PM »

Oh... there you go again, tempting (tormenting) me! However, I am saved by the the fact that my notebook features a PATA interface, and the new 5400 rpm Samsungs and the latest generation Seagates, Toshiba and Hitachi 7200 rpm drives are all SATA only. Vegas, you note that you have a new Seagate 7200 rpm drive but that it is ATA100/PATA interface, correct? What model is it? Curiosity is killing me (or at least is going to seriously dent my bank account  ).

3424

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Textmaker (Softmaker/Ashampoo Office) 2008

« Last post by Darwin on January 14, 2008, 04:17 PM »

Funny - I actually have SoftMaker Office 2008 installed (academic licencing is a wonderful thing) and had meant to test this out myself. Of course, I've forgotten. I'll try and do so today or tomorrow and post back here with my own "experiences".

3425

Living Room / Re: What kind of tagging system would be appropriate for DC?

« Last post by Darwin on January 14, 2008, 04:15 PM »

Just an update to my last post. CodeTrucker has contacted me to clarify that it was his intention to remove all of his posts - those that remain are there because he was unable to delete them, not because he was in leaving those that do remain he was trying to send an additional, final message (the act of removing the posts was no doubt the final message!).

I'm not planning on being a regular (or irregular) messenger in this or any other thread for CodeTrucker, but thought that this point was important.

EDIT: struck through a couple of words in the interest of clarity  An example of one of those glaring errors that I referred to earlier!