Recent Posts

4526

General Review Discussion / Re: Free PDF tools review?

« Last post by Darwin on September 19, 2007, 04:17 PM »

can't spell penicillin, though

Yes I can! Just didn't do it correctly, that's all... 

4527

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by Darwin on September 19, 2007, 04:15 PM »

Thought I'd answered this earlier, but clearly haven't: SuperboyAC - are you familiar with the phrase "wild goose chase", I'm pretty sure that this is what doublewitt was getting at with "goose chaser". Essentially, you're wasting your time trying to attain the unattainable.

4528

General Software Discussion / Re: 13 Reasons Why Linux Won't Make it to a Desktop Near You

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 11:31 PM »

Over the years I've tried Mandrake, Ubuntu, Kororaa, Saboyan, I'm sure there have been others. I'm leaning toward Ubuntu as its the last distro that I used and I really liked it. We'll see. I haven't kept a dual boot configuration for long because I'm on notebooks and have always had to think about harddisk space. Now that I've a spare notebook I figure its time to have a dedicated Linux box to play with! If all work and no play makes me a dull boy, what does all play and no work make? Not really bone idle but... what?

4529

General Software Discussion / Re: Quizo QTTabbar

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 11:20 PM »

Of course, the more I play with it the more amazing it becomes:



Hovering the mouse cursor over a folder that contains files and/or subfolders results in a list of links to those files or subfolders popping up. Subfolders that contain items do the same, and so on, and so on... Little details like this, which seem like nothing, make all the difference. It's very early days (minutes) yet, but I can see that discovering all that these add-ins have to offer is going to be enjoyable (and eye opening).

4530

General Software Discussion / Re: Quizo QTTabbar

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 11:12 PM »

Thanks for pointing these dines out to us, Curt. I've finally gotten around to installing them and boy, do they ever make a difference to Windows Explorer! I doubt that this will wean me off DOpus 9, but it makes Windows Explorer a utility that I will be adding back into the list of File Managers that I play around with 

4531

Living Room / Re: A twist of events by Novell in the PC vs. Mac long running war

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 10:13 PM »

Hadn't thought of that, but it is a very good point.

4532

Developer's Corner / Re: What Are My Options To Test On Mac OS X?

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 09:14 PM »

I had no idea Apple made it illegal to run OS X on anything than Apple hardware. Oh well. No Mac games from me.

-tinjaw (September 18, 2007, 07:10 PM)

Crazy, innit?

4533

General Software Discussion / Re: 13 Reasons Why Linux Won't Make it to a Desktop Near You

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 09:14 PM »

The learning curve for any new OS is likely to be steep. I still marvel at how counterintuitive a Mac feels after I've been away for awhile - even though everything is right there. Linux I find to be much easier, probably because the GUI mimics Windows to a degree.

Edvard - I've tried Linux and I love it. Most of my attachment to Windows has to do with expensive software that I've purchased to run under it - it's not really a rational attachment, more sentimental, although some of the apps simply don't have analogues in Linux (ArcGIS and some 3D Geometric Morphometrics apps that I run). I've tried WINE and it's just not the same... Anyway, I consider Linux to be a very viable alternative to both Windows and OSX (which I also have running on an old iBook  - admittedly its 10.2.x not the latest greatest version, mind). I've a notebook that I will be moving from dual boot to strictly Linux (haven't decided on a distro yet) in the near future.

4534

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 2gb Kingston flash drive for $6.95 at Buy.com

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 09:06 PM »

Sweet - I've had one of these for a year or so now (paid $39.95 CDN. for it so didn't do *too* badly) and it's been killer. I also have a 512MB Kingston Traveller of the first generation of "Travellers" and it's been rock solid, too. I'm tempted to get a 4 or 8GB stick but am going to wait the five years or so that it will take them to cram a terabyte onto a thumbdrive 

4535

General Software Discussion / Re: Help! My computer has lost the hibernation feature!

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 09:04 PM »

actually i was asking you because i upgraded from 512mb to 1gb in one of the pc and lost the feature..

-lanux128 (September 18, 2007, 09:02 PM)

Had the same experience - no idea how I fixed it, though. *Possibly* it was courtesy of a patch, but it was two years ago and I no longer remember 

4536

Living Room / Re: A twist of events by Novell in the PC vs. Mac long running war

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 09:00 PM »

Very, very funny. I liked these much better than the Mac ads that they are parodying. The satire works better because I think it is more accurate...

4537

General Software Discussion / Re: Help! My computer has lost the hibernation feature!

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 05:44 PM »

João's advice should set things straight under XP. However, I'm not sure about how hibernation is enabled/disabled under Vista. Are you running XP or Vista (just seemed prudent to ask...)?

4538

General Software Discussion / Re: Appaholic - Another nice freeware review page

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 05:29 PM »

relequestual - great site and welcome to DonationCoder 

4539

Developer's Corner / Re: What Are My Options To Test On Mac OS X?

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

I'm <cough, cough> pissing in the wind here, but my guess is that in order to develop for OSX you're going to have to get your hands on Apple hardware to run it on. I hope to be proven wrong... but am not optimistic.

4540

Living Room / Re: New York Times Select (paid access) section to close and become open to all

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 03:29 PM »

This is good news. I wish the Globe and Mail would do the same. I enjoy reading news from around the world and getting different perspectives on news items. I've been frustrated many times while viewing the NYT website because the content that I wanted to view is available with a subscription only. This will alleviate that problem nicely! The G&M makes all of its headline news in each section available free, so this isn't such a problem BUT a lot of the op-ed pieces are subscription only and I'm missing out!

4541

General Review Discussion / Re: Free PDF tools review?

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 02:29 PM »

Like Adobe Acrobat 7, everything, with the exception of the handwriting in the left hand margin, is editable in Scansoft PDF Converter 4 Pro as well. I can move the handwriting and managed to rearrange/add to it to make it say "Penicilin". Xchange Viewer is pretty cool!

4542

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Office 2007 Ultimate for $59.99 (if you're a student)

« Last post by Darwin on September 18, 2007, 12:48 PM »

PhilB66 - thanks for the link, good to know.

I am going to pass on this deal as well - I don't need Outlook to be any slower/more of resource hog and the one licence per e-mail address/one installation per licence is not even remotely interesting to me. Sun can develop Star Office and GIVE it to students and faculty, sell it to the general public for about $70 USD and give away OpenOffice, why can't M$ do better than this?

4543

General Software Discussion / Re: GemX - missing in action

« Last post by Darwin on September 17, 2007, 06:36 PM »

After the blog was setup, quickly after, the forum appeared and so the blog was left behind...

Yeah, that's what I figured... after posting the above note, I went back and looked more closely at the blog and that is one of the prominent postings there.

4544

General Software Discussion / Re: GemX - missing in action

« Last post by Darwin on September 17, 2007, 06:29 PM »

Just checked - looks like the blog was somebody's pet project for a couple of months and then was abandoned. An "amazing" total of seven (7) posts.

4545

General Software Discussion / Re: GemX - missing in action

« Last post by Darwin on September 17, 2007, 06:27 PM »

I agree doublewitt. Unfortunately, today marks one year exactly since the blog was updated!

4546

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

« Last post by Darwin on September 17, 2007, 05:57 PM »

A meagre 1 GB and my blasted three year old notebook is maxed out. I've had a number of conflicting reports about this - even the manufacturer's support personnel, one of their FAQ's, and both SIW and an old free version of Everest say that I can go to 2 GB, but other sources, including a different page on the manufacturer's site and Kingston RAM upgrade checker all say I'm already maxed out. If 1 GB sticks of PC2100 notebook RAM were cheaper, I'd go for it and accept the loss if it turns out that the BIOS won't recognize more than one gig but alas PC2100 RAM is still pretty pricey.

I keep being tempted by a new notebook but Vista isn't a route I'm ready to take - I played with a freshly booted notebook with 2GB of RAM and Vista Ultimate installed and after boot only 800 MB of RAM were free. I actually bought almost the identical machine (identically spec'd RAM, harddrive and CPU) at Christmas with XP Media Centre preinstalled and returned it (buyer's remorse - kicking myself now) and right after boot it reporting well over 1.5GB free RAM. Discouraging...

4547

General Software Discussion / Re: GemX - missing in action

« Last post by Darwin on September 17, 2007, 08:29 AM »

hi celtichare - welcome to Donationcoder! The most disturbing thing about all of this is that the homepage seems to be "business as usual" (though there are no updates, no news notices and not other signs that anything is going on there) and yet there has been no announcement about the forum and none of us here have received a single reply to our attempts at contact through a number of channels. Presumably, it is still possible to buy licences for their products. I'm actually hoping that someone for GemX finds this thread and will enlighten us, but while I am hopeful I am not delusional

4548

General Software Discussion / Re: XP or Vista user — take the poll!

« Last post by Darwin on September 16, 2007, 09:51 PM »

Maxthon 1.x or 2.x adds the "restore sessoin upon crash" feature to all IE versions.

4549

General Software Discussion / Re: Good programs for helping you manage what programs start with windows?

« Last post by Darwin on September 16, 2007, 09:48 PM »

Ha, ha - sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but your comment about the 5-8% of CPU on the PCMag forum had me laughing this morning and it is sort of funny that it turned out to be you! Actually, what had me laughing was the assertion that this is normal and within acceptable limits. Not in my reality it's not.

The only other factor (other than a system that is running fine at the moment) preventing me from jumping at the Chameleon alternative is the fact that TUT (which I've mentioned in the other thread) cautions against using more than one application to manage startup. I'm almost tempted to install the demo and see what happens... if I fall in love with it it's the work of a moment to restore everything modified by TUT and use that app exclusively for running tasks and services (which is what I bought it for in the first place). However, that flies in the face of the fact that my system is running sweetly at the moment and I am loathe to apply a fix for something that is not broken!

So, I think you can be pretty safe at minimum trying Chameleon out - it sees very well regarded by other DC'ers.

4550

General Software Discussion / Re: GemX - missing in action

« Last post by Darwin on September 16, 2007, 08:36 AM »

sigh - I  check four or five times a week. I run Maxthon 2 and have a "notetaking" group that opens the GemX forum page along with the forum pages for other notetakers. "Maintenance Mode" has gotten very, very old! It's funny you asked this question as just this morning I was wondering why I bother keeping the GemX forum link activated in that group - it's not looking like it's every coming back