Recent Posts

4351

Living Room / Re: download all updates for XP in one go?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 02, 2007, 09:00 AM »

Comment on your comment before mine - no such folders exist on my system.

4352

General Software Discussion / Re: Stay Away From Microsoft VISTA

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 01, 2007, 12:30 PM »

Pretty much how I have felt since the old days of Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++.

Whenever I look at manuals there are so many acronyms that mean little or nothing to me I just give up.

And I used to teach programming for a living!

4353

General Review Discussion / Re: Educational Software reviews?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 01, 2007, 11:10 AM »

Not being snotty about it - but I don't think Equation Wizard is worth the bandwidth to download even from giveawayoftheday!! Certainly not worth $30 !!!

4354

General Review Discussion / Re: Educational Software reviews?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 01, 2007, 10:30 AM »

It doesn't do the same job though - Rapid-Pi is an equation editor/addon on to facilitate adding equations to WP documents.

Equation Wizard doesn't do anything like that - you enter and equation and it tries to solve it or an expression and it tries to simplify it. I can't see any effective to cut and paste expressions/equations to other apps and it is standalone. Just seems to be very limited in what it can do.

4355

General Review Discussion / Re: Educational Software reviews?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on September 01, 2007, 09:48 AM »

Seems very simple to me - doesn't have any trig functions and can't cope with fractional powers (eg. x^(1/2) which is just a square root).

See:



Any fractional powers more complex than that it just gives up:



even though both of these are trivial to solve.

I suppose it is useful if kids want to cheat on their homework with quadratic equations:



but frankly what is the point ?

4356

Living Room / Re: 64 bit Vista - help and advice

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 31, 2007, 08:12 AM »

See my message here for MS 32-bit memory management.

My understanding is that 64-bit Windows doesn't suffer from these memory restrictions but there are driver and software compatibility issues. I can't find the article at the moment but I read some articles a while ago that did benchmark comparisons with Windows XP 32 and 64 bit versions and actually found the 32 bit version was faster - go figure. I would have though 4GB with 32 bit windows would be OK for your needs - perhaps check your PS preferences to ensure you allow PS to use enough physical memory. Also move your scratch files to a separate parttition on a different hard drive from the windows drive (and if you can a different drive to the windows page file).

4357

Living Room / Re: download all updates for XP in one go?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 31, 2007, 08:10 AM »

Nope

4358

General Software Discussion / Re: Anger Management: living with Windows XP + lot of software

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 30, 2007, 09:56 AM »

Virtualise all the stuff you test (VMWare or VirtualPC - which is now free - for preference, Altiris SVC if not possible and at least do a full registry backup before installing anything dodgy on your main system).

Now if I could just learn to do it myself!

4359

Developer's Corner / Re: VB6 - where to go now?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2007, 06:32 PM »

How about RealBasic - it even converts VB code for you. See http://www.realbasic.com/

It is regularly updated (and has an annual subscription model) and has a standard and professional mode. The professional mode allows access to facilities like SQL databases.

Worth a look and has the huge advantage that it is cross platform compatible (Windows, Linux and MacOS) so one code compiles to all platforms.

Here is a sample screen from the IDE:

4360

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a simple, inexpensive Video Editing Software

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2007, 06:28 PM »

Try http://www.sonycreat...ucts/vegasfamily.asp

Trial versions available. I have the Pro version of this lot and it is superb - the two 'consumer' level versions will probably do what you need.

4361

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone Using OmniPage and PaperPort?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2007, 06:24 PM »

To be fair it really isn't $700 worth of software - they are constantly doing special offers. It reminds me rather of the kitchen cupboard companies who have permanent sales - the 'retail' prices look like you are getting an amazing deal. Anyone who pays $500 for OmniPage must have more money than sense.

You haven't got too much to lose provided they still do their 30-day no quibble money back offer by buying the software but given the offer runs until September 30th why not download the trial apps and make sure it actually does what you want:

Here is the trial page for PaperPort:

http://www.nuance.com/paperport/trial/

They seem to have removed the trial versions of OmniPage and PDF Converter!

If they really have done a good job with version 16 let us know 'cos I could really do with something like this that works well.

4362

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone Using OmniPage and PaperPort?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2007, 04:28 PM »

The trouble with OmniPage (and all OCR software really) is that it just isn't accurate enough. If it is 99% accurate (and it isn't unless you have a scanner that makes perfect copies of ideal fonts) then there will be 1% error rate - that is roughly a wrong character on every line in a document - by the time you manually edit the errors out for a fast typer it probably would be quicker to have retyped the text in the first place.

The other, and biggest problem, is formatting - one of the reason's I got interested in OmniPage (back in version 10/11 days, I forget which) they pushed the idea of maintaining formatting and outputting perfectly formed Word documents. This never worked (even on simple documents) and one of the reasons I demanded a refund on version 15 was that it had got no better. My experience was documents full of OCR errors - formatting pretty much all over the place and new styles created for practically every line of text which meant the only way to edit the file was to go through and change all the styles.

Formatted output never worked at all in my experience in automatic mode - you had to spend time telling it which parts of the page were text and graphics by drawing different colour boxes. The auto correction (using a dictionary) was a joke as half the time it OCRed text so badly it couldn't make an intelligent guess.

Sorry - but if others are reading this thread they shouldn't be led into thinking OmniPage is a good solution for all OCR needs. It claims to be be the industry leader and of professional standard but the latter at least is just not true.

Anyone interested in this sort of software should try the demo version first and make sure they are happy with what it does. Also try out the opposition before comitting good money to OmniPage!

If you want to 'read' PDF files then Adobe do a free plugin with Adobe Acrobat (not sure if it works with the free reader version - but it works well with the full version).

Also if you have Microsoft Office it has rudimentary OCR capability that may be enough for your needs. See http://office.micros...x?pid=CL100636481033

4363

Living Room / Re: PC Upgrade - still possible to reuse old components?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2007, 01:53 PM »

I think it is safe to say that if it has a PCIe slot and a 20 pin ATX connector there shouldn't be a problem. You aren't going for a heavy duty graphics card anyway - and SLI systems have to support 2 of them - which is why they need extra power (on my mobo I have a 24 pin connector and an extra 4 pin molex if I run 2 PCIe cards)

4364

Living Room / Re: PC Upgrade - still possible to reuse old components?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2007, 07:54 AM »

Have in mind that both mainboards would not hold too well future upgrades, as they only have 2 SATA ports. Other thing that worries me is those ATX connectors, you'll have to do some cable management to avoid PSU cables getting in the way with the CPU heatsink. Hmmm, tricky. The ASRock is worse in that regard

-Lashiec (August 29, 2007, 07:17 AM)

I agree - it is really badly placed - what were they thinking? Lanux the issue is that you want to keep cable bunches out of the main air fow path to allow for the best cooling. On the AS-Rock board they have place the main ATX power connector between the CPU and the main venting point on a standard ATX case  - so any fan sucking air out will have to suck through the main power cables. You will need to think how best to route the cables to avoid disrupting the airflow too much.

With massive SATA drives growing in size all the time is only 2 sockets really a big issue (ok it is nice to have more if you want to build big RAID arrays, and eSATA would be a nice feature) - you can easily have ~1 Tb of storage with just the SATA sockets, but you can also have 2 PATA drives two as well as IDE optical drives.

4365

Living Room / Re: PC Upgrade - still possible to reuse old components?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2007, 06:32 AM »

Not true - there is a 2Gb max per application in Windows XP and Vista 32 bit versions but windows can recognise more memory and use it if you have more than one app loaded. 64 bit versions (presumably just around the corner for most of us) have no such restriction - and on the AS-Rock board you could increase to 8Gb!

Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 Memory Support. The maximum amount of memory that can be supported on Windows XP Professional and Windows Server 2003 is also 4 GB. However, Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition supports 32 GB of physical RAM and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition supports 64 GB of physical RAM

See Microsoft article on memory

This article is also interesting http://www.microsoft...rver/PAE/pae_os.mspx (it is linked from the previous link I quoted).

4366

Living Room / Re: I wanna hurt this guy!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2007, 05:02 AM »

Curt - buy a Pioneer DVD+-RW DL drive - and chuck out the old drive. You can get a brand new Pioneer drive for about $16/$30 and they are fantastic and burn any format you like. For example see http://www.overclock...php?prodid=CD-044-PO (not exactly known as a cheap supplier but this seems to be a common price for these drives. I have 4 of the - well actually the previous model - and they are fantastic).

4367

Living Room / Re: PC Upgrade - still possible to reuse old components?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2007, 04:58 AM »

The AS-Rock looks the better buy to me and rings all the right bells if you don't want SLi. Plenty of expansion - more PCI slots and memory slots are useful - effectively the SIS board is limited at 2Gb (OK theoretically it can support 4GB for find 2Gb modules - and if you do there is no guarantee they will work and will probably cost an arm and a leg!).

I haven't had any experience with SIS chipsets but the only drawback of the ASRock to my mind is the VIA chipset - their drivers then to be a bit iffy at times - rule of thumb find a version that works and stick with it unless there is a pressing reason to upgrade.

4368

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone Using OmniPage and PaperPort?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 29, 2007, 04:37 AM »

It converts documents into PDF format - you can use it like a printer to output PDF files.

-Carol Haynes (August 28, 2007, 05:03 PM)

I think it is more than that. From their website:

Edit PDF documents directly just like working in the original file

This is the part I'm interested in.

-edbro (August 28, 2007, 05:06 PM)

Yep - but if you order the upgrade mentioned you don't get that version - you just get a PDF Maker - and there are plenty of free ones out there.

Here is the current offer:



This is not the Pro version.

[ed... sorry if there is some confusion I was looking at the upgrade offer from Nuance ... having said that I still wouldn't buy it from Bits du Jour ... There are a lot of options on the web (eg. http://www.freedownl...pdf-editor-free.html) or if you want a good professional solution that is a lot cheaper than Adobe have a look at http://www.jawspdf.c...ktopsuite/index.html which is excellent reliable software and provides PDF creator and editor]

4369

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone Using OmniPage and PaperPort?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 28, 2007, 05:03 PM »

It converts documents into PDF format - you can use it like a printer to output PDF files. See http://www.nuance.co...verter/professional/

There are other free utilities that work just as well, and other rival products that work better (IMHO) such as JawsPDF and NitroPDF.

My one experience with PDF Converter is that it told me I had to uninstall another application before it would install !!

4370

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone Using OmniPage and PaperPort?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 28, 2007, 03:27 PM »

I have OmniPage Pro 11 (though it isn't installed now) ... I "upgraded" to version 12 and was so appalled I asked for a refund.

I got their upgrade off you mentioned but personally I won't be looking at Scansoft (Nuance) again. Their tech support sucks  - I have TextBridge before OmniPage too - and every version has been bug ridden but updates to fix bugs are non-existent and each new version doesn't seem to add much new apart from a few bug fixes (and a pile of new ones). They always claim that accuracy and speed impove - but their marketing is pretty much like MS and Windows hype - each version gets more bloated and slower, with bigger demands on hardware. Yes things get faster if you upgrade your computer to a higher spec ... and why wouldn't it but the basic products installed on the same system degrade in performance version by version as far as I can see.

I also use PaperPort for a while - but that was a long time ago and it seemed to me to crash more than it worked - I haven't bothered with any version since. Maybe it is time for me to re-evaluate that as it is a good idea but I can't bring myself to buy an upgrade.

4371

Living Room / Re: I wanna hurt this guy!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 28, 2007, 11:52 AM »

I don't know what app you are referring to, Carol, but it is not SPAMfighter. Once you have clicked "allow", the sender will never be deleted no matter what others may think of it.

-Curt (August 28, 2007, 10:55 AM)

The problem is that a number of legitimate and useful newsletters are sent from different email addresses for each issue - in this case you can't "allow" and address because you don't know what it is until it arrives. If other people have marked some of the previous emails as spam because they are too idle to unsubscribe it can have a long term effect on all other users of the service who then have all the email dumped in the Junk mail pile.

I haven't tried SPAMfighter because I tried so many similar services for other 'community' approach spam filter companies and they all caused me major annoyance. I am not saying SPAMfighter is bad but now I rely on my own resouces to filter Spam - and I'd guess my filtering system (based on POPfile bayesian analysis of the content) is over 99.9% effective without having to depend on external services or internet connections for checking incoming mail.

One of the nice features of POPfile is that it tells you how many messages it has classified incorrectly (based on you having to correct it) so you can see how quickly the sorting process gets increasingly accurate. The great thing is you are limited to filtering spam.

For example you can filter all emails relating to "photography" or "security" or "shopping" (or whatever) so that you can filter email without having to set up lots of complicated rules in your email client. All you have to do is when you set up the filter is give it a batch of emails that are eg. shopping emails and a batch that aren't - it then very quickly works out what characteristics are common to 'shopping' emails.

4372

Living Room / Re: I wanna hurt this guy!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 28, 2007, 10:47 AM »

One of the things I dislike is the community approach. Every time I have used a similar approach I find loads of email gets classified as SPAM because too many members of the community use the spam sighting engine as a quick way to delete unwanted emails such as newsletters that are not really spam but people are just too idle to unsubscribe properly. Consequently you find yourself wading through hundreds of adverts for "penis extensions" and "viagra" to find the mail you consider legitimate rather than simply pressing delete.

4373

Living Room / Re: I wanna hurt this guy!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 28, 2007, 09:32 AM »

As f0dder says you should filter on content of the emails not the email address. If you filter on content you can block emails sent using any email address (even your own) without affecting legitimate mail.

That is one of the reasons I mentioned POPfile. It isn't a spam filter - when it is installed it knows nothing at all about spam. The point is that based on email content (not the header) it can accurately filter mail in any way you choose. One of thos ways is if you tell it which emails you consider spam.

As to overcoming the initial problem of stopping someone using your email in this way I have no idea. I have 5 domain names and I'd guess I get 200+ emails a day that are address to fictitious addresses beased on those domain names and also appearing to be sent from one of my legitmate addresses.

I have come to the conclusion the only solution is to filter them out in whatever way suits you and delete them. Reporting them to anti spam sites doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever (apart from using up your precious time).

If anyone knows any method of reporting abuse of an email address or domain that works I would like to know. The only way I can see of doing it is forcing hosting servers to validate that every email is actually sent via that server before delivery - but how or by whom that would be implemented I don't know. The only other alternative is to block all but digitally signed email (a bit like SSL websites) - but that would be expensive and rule most people out the email system at the moment.

Yahoo have started using a system called "Domain Keys" which tells you if the email actually originated from the domain it claims. However, they seem to be doing that on some sort of lookup table basis which is far from complete.

4374

Living Room / Re: Life without XP SP2 - is it possible?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 28, 2007, 07:30 AM »

Sounds like when you install your system you aren't detecting the Network properly. If the network is encrypted (which it probably is) and the SSID (the network name) is hidden your computer won't see the network at all. During installation if you say you have a network Windows installer tends to believe you so my guess is that it sets up a totally different 'network' that doesn't really exist.

I'd suggest you don't allow windows to connect to the internet during windows installation so it leaves the network set up to do manually after the installation. Make sure you have the network SSID (the network name) and the encryption type and keys to get onto the network. Before you even attempt to connect to the network though make sure you update to the latest drivers (you can save them no for future use to a floppy or CDROM).

If windows automatically sets up a network connect delete it before you try and do anything else.

Basically you are playing in the wonderful uncharted waters of Windows Networking - which is a bit aof a black art since MS scatter the options to the four winds and provide no documentation (at least non that can be understood without doing a 3 year course on Windows networking).

4375

Living Room / Re: I wanna hurt this guy!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on August 28, 2007, 06:11 AM »

Curt - go get POPfile or SpamBayes and install it.

POPfile 'sees' all your email before it gets to your inbox and inserts a line int he header to flag the content (and can optionally prefix the subject field with anything you want). It is a general filtering system which is useful in its own right and gets very accurate after a surprisingly short time. The only disadvantage is that you use a browser window to alter options and to crrect errors that creep in (esp. early on while it learning your rules). It is particularly effective at SPAM trapping. Just tell it what you consider spam and within a few days I'd guess it is about 95% accurate - and gets progressively better the more you train it. After a month or so it is pretty much 100%.

Go to http://popfile.sourceforge.net/ to download it. If you like it and want to keep using it in the future remember to back up your POPfile database so that you can retain the learning if/when you need to reinstall windows.

Depending on the mail client software you use it will automatically configure your email accounts to work properly. If you use Outlook you can set up a quick link to open the POPfilee config page automatically within Outlook which is very handy (see the help file on the website).