Recent Posts

4226

Official Announcements / Re: Draw Cody competition - win incredible prizes!

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 04:17 PM »

That's my favourite one so far, Ralf! Well done Audrey 

4227

Living Room / Re: The worst thing about Macs

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 04:17 PM »

I suspect you're right, Ralf, but I couldn't quite be sure so asked for clarification. Looking back on my post, I edited it so severely that it comes across as rather defensive... 

4228

General Software Discussion / Re: CD Earth picks up where ThinkAll left off

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 04:06 PM »

I added a comment, Carroll.

4229

Living Room / Re: The worst thing about Macs

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 03:19 PM »

nontroppo - exactly who are you accusing of being bigoted? Any/all of the posters in this thread or the authors of material that has been linked to from this thread? Or all of the above?

4230

General Software Discussion / Re: What are your Top Tech/Software Newsletters?

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 01:46 PM »

I get the paid versions of both Gizmo's TechSupport Alert Newsletter and Windows Secrets Newsletter (have they done away with the paid version recently?).

4231

General Software Discussion / Re: CD Earth picks up where ThinkAll left off

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 01:28 PM »

Done! Apparently, I set up a digg account two years ago but had no recollection of it. All taken care of now. I hope you get a lot of response on this, Chris. I hate to think of people getting ripped off, especially if it can be avoided by getting the word out.

4232

Older Newsletters / Re: Newletter for October 15 - Codename "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK"

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 01:12 PM »

Crumb, I don't know if I was being incredibly (and atypically) insightful or if I've read about this in the past and simply forgotten  about it, but sometimes it sucks being right! That is truly scary.

4233

Older Newsletters / Re: Newletter for October 15 - Codename "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK"

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 11:30 AM »

Ah, you've reminded of my other thought (which I lost in the course of writing my previous note) -I'm speculating, but I'm wondering if some of the smaller operation spammers use some sort of trojan/malware to use people's machines as drones to assist them in dealing with the volume of mail they send out each day?

4234

Older Newsletters / Re: Newletter for October 15 - Codename "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK"

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 10:54 AM »

I wonder how those spammers send millions of emails a day...

-housetier (October 18, 2007, 10:17 AM)

Probably have servers dedicated to sending out SPAM (DC has to contend with 1000's of visitors a day, probably tens of 1000's a day, all of them downloading content and some of them uploading it as well in the form of attachments to forum postings, etc.).

4235

General Software Discussion / Re: CD Earth picks up where ThinkAll left off

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 10:52 AM »

OK will do, Chris. Just waiting for my e-mail to be verified. As I am waiting for a human to respond this might take a bit of time, but it's on my to do list!

4236

General Software Discussion / Re: CD Earth picks up where ThinkAll left off

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 10:12 AM »

Chris - I am naive when it comes to blogging, and don't have a blog. Is there any other way that I can help bump your blog's profile?

4237

Living Room / Re: How much RAM do you have on your PC?

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 10:10 AM »

With 2 gigs I haven't bumped into problems running without pagefile - but I don't use photoshop, video editing, or heavy 3D rendering. I do mess a slight bit with paint shop pro, I build projects with visual studio, and play some (even recent) games, though.

-f0dder (October 18, 2007, 09:56 AM)

Hmm... sounds like your usage is similar to mine - even a bit more intensive (I don't play any games) - what are the advantages, in your experience, between running with and without a page file?

4238

Living Room / Re: How much RAM do you have on your PC?

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 09:38 AM »

Heh, heh, yes - you're right fodder. I used a screencap of TaskManager because I find it easier to read (and assume other readers will as well). I'm less concerned about the amount of RAM free than I am about the "feel" or responsiveness of the computer. I've now had all of the above apps running for 45 minutes and added two more about 10 minutes ago (Photofiltre Studio and RealDraw Pro - each with two images opened) and TM reports that there are 550MB RAM free still... while Process Explorer reveals:





EDIT:  The main point being that my computer is still as responsive running all of these apps - getting on for 1 hour 30 minutes now - as it was with a gig of RAM and Outlook and Maxthon running by themselves (with the background processes I mentioned running as well).

Nosh - I've considered disabling my paging file but have yet to take the plunge. The computer performs so well that I can't really see the point.

4239

Living Room / Re: How much RAM do you have on your PC?

« Last post by Darwin on October 18, 2007, 08:57 AM »

I'm responding to two things here:

1. RAM optimizers - I've found that all they do is eat up resources in their own right and make me obsess over how much RAM I have free. When I finally uninstalled the last of the ones that I ran as a standalone app, I was amazed to discover that my computer was actually performing just fine when I only had 70MB of RAM free. Prior to that I had a RAM optimizer trying to recover up to 300MB RAM. After uninstalling the optimizer, I went back to CleanCache XP 1.51 and set it up to optimize my cache and settings but NOT to run in the tray and recover RAM. I've been happy ever since (though in honesty, I've no idea if it's really made any significant change in performance or not). I had to re-run the optimizer after doubling my RAM the other day. All seems well.
2. An interesting (to me!) observation is that when I went from 512MB of RAM to a gig on this computer (running WinXP Pro Sp-2) I noted that all my apps used more RAM - I forget where I've read about this being normal - Windows was recognising that there was more RAM available and not working so hard to release it, I guess. The interesting observation is that this is not the case having doubled my RAM again - memory usage is the same on a per process basis.

I got a bit concerned about the possibility that my computer was only utilizing 1GB of RAM (if you recall, I finally upgraded to 2GB despite conflicting reports about whether or not this was possible) as I was writing this because I was going to observe that I'd yet to see my free RAM drop below 1.2GB. Well... I've got two different versions of PaintShop Pro (9 and X2) running, DrawPlus 8, PagePlus X2, the entire Office 2003 Professional Suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, Access, Publisher, Powerpoint), Onenote 2007, OmniPage 16 Pro, PDF Converter 4 Pro, PaperPort 11 Pro, Endnote X, Maxthon 2, SnagIt 8.2 and DOPus running (in addition to other apps in the background such as Clipmate 7.2, SpellCatcher Plus, TextMonkey, Archivarius 3000, NetworkMagic, PS Tray Factory, File-Ex, Spysweepr with AV, Windows Washer, Ad-Muncher, and Process Tamer. I've still got 560MB of RAM free and my computer is as responsive as ever. This alone justifies the price of the RAM upgrade for me  and relieves me of the worry that the extra gig wasn't being utilized! 

*Note that I've opened three pictures each in the two PaintShop Pro programs and one document in each of the Office applications and in each of the Scansoft apps. Haven't opened files in the Serif products...





I'm pretty stinkin' happy about this (and feeling quite smug - not a good sign... doesn't pride come before a fall  ?). This would have been IMPOSSIBLE with my former setup.

PS Most of the CPU utilization is split between PagePlus X2 and SnagIt. SnagIt really hits the CPU while you're taking a screenshot with it, I've found.

4240

Living Room / Re: The worst thing about Macs

« Last post by Darwin on October 17, 2007, 08:52 PM »

Back on topic, Jason Cross has made a follow up posting on this topic. Read it over at Extreme Tech. He basically relates the types of response that he has received since the original article "went live" and samples some of the e-mail that he's received.

4241

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Qimage, "Professional Photographic Printing Software" - a second look

« Last post by Darwin on October 17, 2007, 06:43 PM »

Nice job, tomos  I must say that the little animation that you include, showing the differneces in pixelation in a picture of a car's wheel when processed with a photo editor and with Qimage is compelling. You've made me want to take a look!

4242

Living Room / Re: The worst thing about Macs

« Last post by Darwin on October 17, 2007, 06:41 PM »

These folks are Naughty Users, straining the limits of what they have.

-Ralf Maximus (October 17, 2007, 03:40 PM)

Darwin is a Naughty User 

-Darwin (October 17, 2007, 05:55 PM)

And should be spanked! 

-Renegade (October 17, 2007, 06:08 PM)

I was hoping someone would make that leap 

4243

Living Room / Re: UK Government wants your crypto keys... by law.

« Last post by Darwin on October 17, 2007, 06:39 PM »

Er... how do you make the leap from the members of a small food foraging group viewing themselves as part of nature to those same individuals viewing the land that they live and hunt on as being held in common? I'm just curious, because food foragers have NO concept of ownership, so it's not accurate to state that they view land as being held in common because it's not "held" in our sense of the word.

At any rate, I was responding to Carol'snote about the Native Americans (and Australian aborignes) and their failure to understand the European concept of "ownership" of the land. Nothing more, nothing less (and "PC" certainly doesn't enter into it). Cultural behaviour and custom is adaptive in its original context. What worked for food foragers, living in tiny nomadic groups largely in isolation from other such groups in vast, incredibly low population density landscapes, clearly won't work in densely populated industrialized regions of the world and while it would be nice to share their view of the landscape and their relationship to it, it's not practical in our "neck of the woods".

4244

Living Room / Re: The worst thing about Macs

« Last post by Darwin on October 17, 2007, 05:55 PM »

These folks are Naughty Users, straining the limits of what they have.

-Ralf Maximus (October 17, 2007, 03:40 PM)

Darwin is a Naughty User 

4245

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

« Last post by Darwin on October 17, 2007, 05:53 PM »

Darwin, the link for Directory Opus in the poll have some extra fluff

-Lashiec (October 17, 2007, 03:22 PM)

Thanks, Lashiec - I've corrected it (all that was missing was a forward slash. Bizarre that it had such a profound effect!

4246

General Software Discussion / Re: GemX - missing in action

« Last post by Darwin on October 17, 2007, 05:22 PM »

I'm not sure what to write here - I almost wrote from the same conflicted perspective yesterday (or the day before, after reading Peter Brooks' comments on the origins and fate of the forum as posted by Ron) - I feel a bit confllicted. I"ve accomplished two of my three goals, which were to get GemX to communicate with its customers (via its website - accomplished), to get GemX to communicate directly with me regarding my concerns about the state of Do-Organizer (dismal failure - all I wanted was some reassurance that the product was going to continue to be developed and supported), and three to obtain a refund while I could in the event that objective two failed (accomplished). I would far rather have continued to have been a Do-Organizer user/customer. I feel that in pursuing my third goal, I accomplished the first. Perhaps I give myself too much credit...

The conflicted perspective? I didn't want this to turn out like this. I agree with doublewitt - the product has huge potential and I hope GemX can put this episode behind them and realise that potential. I'm on the fence at the moment WRT whether or not I'll be along for the ride. I do feel that they've got their work cut out for them in managing the fallout from the past three months, but hope that they are able to do so.

4247

General Software Discussion / Re: GemX - missing in action

« Last post by Darwin on October 16, 2007, 06:50 PM »

Heh, heh - I'd forgotten about making that post. I'm kicking myself for giving them a "2" (instead of a "1")...

4248

Living Room / Re: How much RAM do you have on your PC?

« Last post by Darwin on October 16, 2007, 06:18 PM »

Another point: I use Scansoft software, which is RAM hungry to put it mildly. It always ran when I had a gig of RAM but was sluggish and annoying. I've currently got PDF Converter 4 Professional running along side Word 2003, Outlook 2003, Maxthon 2 (also a RAM pig), Endnote X and it is like a brand new application. I've never seen it perform like this!

Task Manager reveals 1.2 GB of free RAM running the above...

4249

General Review Discussion / Re: UltraEdit Review and Giveaway ($50 value)

« Last post by Darwin on October 16, 2007, 05:32 PM »

Yeah, and that's exactly what I did! No flies on me!

4250

Living Room / Re: How much RAM do you have on your PC?

« Last post by Darwin on October 16, 2007, 05:32 PM »

Nosh - I swapped out both sticks of RAM (512MB each) and replaced them with two 1 gig sticks.  Opening "up a bunch of processes" really means booting to my desktop and firing up Maxthon...  Your're right, of couse, that doing this leaves me with in excess of 400MB of free RAM if you're subtracting from 1GB. However, from this point I can open a TON of memory hogging apps and I'm not grinding down toward 0 but toward a gig of free RAM. I found that my system was pretty happy even with only 70MB free RAM, but it feels a heck of a lot happier/better with a Gig of free RAM. I mean, I wouldn't have even attempted the every office app plus PaintShop Pro open when I was only running 1 gig... I don't know, YMMV, but for me this was worth every penny (even if it is all placebo  )...