Recent Posts

3476

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

« Last post by Darwin on January 03, 2008, 06:23 PM »

Tranglos and Armando - I'm glad you two were able (strong enough) to walk away. My forehead is bruised and I am tired from the exertion of beating my head against any available hard surface (wall, desktop, etc.). For now, I must keep trying (er, perhaps that should be start trying! Like tranglos I've yet to write anything "concrete" just lots, and lots, and lots of ideas and notes...).

Thanks for sharing guys (and wish me luck?)

3477

Living Room / Re: What is appropriate content for DonationCoder?

« Last post by Darwin on January 03, 2008, 06:17 PM »

CodeTrucker - NSFW = "Not safe/suitable for work"  

3478

Living Room / Re: What is appropriate content for DonationCoder?

« Last post by Darwin on January 03, 2008, 06:14 PM »

Difficult, very difficult. This is a thorny issue because, as others have pointed out, there's a fine line between censorship and an open community. I'd prefer the community to remain open and to continue to allow everyone to post what they feel and to express those feelings as they wish. I don't have anything much to offer at this point other than to bump the thread and hope that other people will post their opinions here. For myself, I am not really easily offfended but I do worry about other peoples' sensibilities, if that makes sense? That is, I do see content, and confess that I have posted some of it myself  , that doesn't offend me personally but that I worry offend or cause discomfort in others.

Hope this makes sense.

Oh my! Five Six posts while I typed the above... this thread doesn't actually need my help!

3479

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

« Last post by Darwin on January 03, 2008, 11:01 AM »

Teaching - good! 
Thesis - bad! 

3480

General Software Discussion / Re: This has to be the most ridiculous license

« Last post by Darwin on January 03, 2008, 11:00 AM »

Good point, Lashiec. I didn't investigate any further, but I suspect this is an activation issue or one in which a machine code is generated and the licence matched to it...

3481

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

« Last post by Darwin on January 03, 2008, 10:01 AM »

Welcome to the millenium club, Armando 

3482

General Software Discussion / Re: This has to be the most ridiculous license

« Last post by Darwin on January 03, 2008, 09:59 AM »

That is ludicrous. I suppose the silver lining (no pun intended) is that buying another silver licence to enable installation on your new machine is only another $9.95 so still cheaper than having bought a gold licence to begin with! Yeah, I'm reaching... but I'm trying to cheer you up!

3483

General Software Discussion / Re: SysInternals auto-installler & auto-updater!

« Last post by Darwin on January 03, 2008, 07:57 AM »

Nice find, Curt 

3484

General Software Discussion / Re: Office suite for my mom?

« Last post by Darwin on January 01, 2008, 02:12 PM »

Just to underline a point already made a number of times in this thread: the Ashampoo/SoftMaker suite is remarkable for the speed with which the apps open up. Absolutely breathtaking (ie pretty much instant).

3485

General Software Discussion / Re: Office suite for my mom?

« Last post by Darwin on January 01, 2008, 01:36 PM »

You download the updaters (they call them service packs) here: http://www.softmaker...lish/servpack_en.htm

So... you can download them on your main computer and save them to a thumbdrive (or whatever) and run them from that - easy peasy!

3486

General Software Discussion / Re: Office suite for my mom?

« Last post by Darwin on January 01, 2008, 12:30 PM »

Hi Tom - you have to request a free key during install and then register to be sent the licence key. It's ever so slightly confusing and not quite as described in the VUNet instructions. The updates you receive are simply later builds of 2006 (and presumably there will not be many, if any, more of these). I already own SoftMaker Office 2006 and went the Ashampoo route in hopes of getting a cheap update to 2008 in the future. You are offered the chance to upgrade during install - in my case it was $39 or $62 Cdn. despite the Canadian dollar being at par).

3487

General Software Discussion / Re: Office suite for my mom?

« Last post by Darwin on January 01, 2008, 12:10 PM »

Hmm... I just took advantage of the giveaway through VUNet posted above, to see if it works still and it does. I was also able to update the Ashampoo version using the Help - Update feature which took me to the SoftMaker website. I downloaded and updated without any trouble.

3488

General Software Discussion / Re: Office suite for my mom?

« Last post by Darwin on January 01, 2008, 10:53 AM »

There are niggles with SoftMaker components - particularly opening Excel 2003 files (I also recall an issue or two with Word documents but can't remember specifics, so could just be a trick of the memory!). The far bigger issue in Chris' case is layout and menus - that's where Star/OpenOffice are more "like" MS Office and would, I think, be easier to provide assistance with from afar. Having said that, I'll stress again that for light footprint and general usage where the level of computer knowledge (on the part of the user) is good, my vote would go for Ashampoo/Softmaker as well. Their stuff is really well thought out and presented, the support forum is active and frequented by support staff, and the product is actively developed, which means that bug fixes are released quite frequently.

Of course, for a PhD candidate whose needs extend beyond simple word processing, I would HIGHLY recommend MS Office Student and Teacher edition, simply because that will result in the least amount of compatibility issues when sharing files with fellow students, supervisors, submitting presentations for conferences, etc, etc.

3489

General Software Discussion / Re: Office suite for my mom?

« Last post by Darwin on December 31, 2007, 06:42 PM »

Yeah, well...  I have Office 2003 Pro as well and only have StarOffice 8 installed because I can  The thing that really stops me from giving it much processor time is that I get irked by it's footprint and how DOG slow it is loading. I mean, c'mon, anything that can make Office 2003 look quick by comparison is laughable! Agree wholeheartedly about the speed with which Office 2006/2008 from TextMaker/Ashampoo loads - makes Office 2003 look, for want of a better phrase, DOG slow...

3490

General Software Discussion / Re: Office suite for my mom?

« Last post by Darwin on December 31, 2007, 06:25 PM »

Office 2008 from Textmaker DOES have a presentations app, but academic pricing won't be available on it until mid-January. It's $14 for students and $13 for teachers, or at least that's the current pricing for academic versions of 2006.

StarOffice is free for students and faculty, so that's a route to consider. It offers a database programme and more proprietary fonts than the OpenOffice version. It also ships with some 3rd party libraries that OO.org doesn't, such as those required to make use of ClearType (I believe). You also get more robust dictionaries and a thesaurs in StarOffice. As your mum is a student, she'd qualify for free use of it. There's no licence key - it's a simple matter of registering and downloading the installer.

It compares very favourably with Office 2003 WRT conventions and usage. TextMaker Office 2008 is an excellent alternative and is much less resource hungry. I've found StarOffice/OpenOffice handle office documents better, though and more faithfully follow Office conventions. This is a consideration when sharing files with colleagues and asking one's son to walk one through the menu system!

Just my two bits...

3491

General Software Discussion / Re: post your 5 most used applications in 2007 here!

« Last post by Darwin on December 31, 2007, 12:22 PM »

Hmm...
 
DOpus 9
Ad-Muncher
Outlook 2003
Maxthon
Webroot Antivirus with Antispyware

3492

Official Announcements / Re: New Visitors to Our Forum - Please Read This First

« Last post by Darwin on December 31, 2007, 12:18 PM »

[{url=http://Welcome to DC, Rhutobello! Check out this thread: https://www.donation...ndex.php?topic=124.0]OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from? [/url], and consider posting a brief note about yourself. Either way, hope to see more of you around here!

-Darwin (December 31, 2007, 06:33 AM)

Hi Mike -
you need to edit your url there (I added a bracket in the quote)
Hi Rhutobello as Darwin says,
check out the thread OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

-tomos (December 31, 2007, 08:40 AM)

  Thanks, Tom. I've corrected it!

EDIT: never too late to clean up formatting issues 

3493

Official Announcements / Re: New Visitors to Our Forum - Please Read This First

« Last post by Darwin on December 31, 2007, 06:33 AM »

Welcome to DC, Rhutobello! Check out this thread: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from? , and consider posting a brief note about yourself. Either way, hope to see more of you around here!

3494

General Software Discussion / Re: My Stupid Windows Question for the Day!

« Last post by Darwin on December 30, 2007, 08:48 AM »

Thanks clevercat. I actually own current licences for XFilesDialog, File-Ex, DirectFolders, and Handy Folders. There's one or two more as well, but I can't remember off-hand. Anyway, currently am using File-Ex and it's fine for my needs. I'll check out FileBox eXtender.

3495

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

« Last post by Darwin on December 29, 2007, 11:48 PM »

Thanks Vegas, that does help! Darwin begins scheming...

3496

General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by Darwin on December 29, 2007, 03:56 PM »

Thanks for the heads up, Pierre - and good luck!

3497

General Software Discussion / Re: Replace Windows Explorer [SOLUTION]

« Last post by Darwin on December 29, 2007, 12:48 PM »

PS Tom - I recommend that you do the above because you're running Dopus 8, as I recall? I'm pretty sure that GPSoft recommends that you do this as well...

3498

General Software Discussion / Re: Replace Windows Explorer [SOLUTION]

« Last post by Darwin on December 29, 2007, 12:44 PM »

Yes, I recall that thread well! Anyway, you're right about not putting absolute faith in XPMyths, as my own experience with "launch folders in a separate process" illustrates!

Tom - you probably don't have "launch folders in a separate process" enabled as it's not a default setting. I recommend that you DO enable it! Go to Windows Explorer and select the tools drop down menu then Folder Options. Select the view tab and you'll find it there.

3499

General Software Discussion / Re: Replace Windows Explorer [SOLUTION]

« Last post by Darwin on December 29, 2007, 12:20 PM »

The split process model is smart, since it ensures your shell wont crash if an explorer.exe browsing your filesystem crashes (usually because of a third-party plugin).

-f0dder (December 29, 2007, 11:34 AM)

I've been running windows like that for some time and disabled it last week to check out what XPMyths has to say about it: http://mywebpages.co...hs.html#Optimization (ctrl-f "launch folders in a separate process" will take you there).

I can report that I get a lot more crashes without it than I did with it, so am going to re-enable it now 

3500

General Software Discussion / Re: Replace Windows Explorer [SOLUTION]

« Last post by Darwin on December 29, 2007, 12:14 PM »

Is it the search feature, Curt? Or is it Windows Explorer? As noted above, if I run Windows Explorer with the QTTab plugins I get a second explorer.exe process running as well... If, as f0dder notes, I have "launch folders in a separate process" enabled the second instance of explorer.exe doesn't close with Windows Explorer. What With "launch folders in a separate process" disabled, the second instance does close...