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4626

General Software Discussion / Re: Returnil Virtual System

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 12, 2007, 04:22 AM »

Yes, it is quite a bummer, she made, so the example becomes very important, quote: "if you buy 3 licenses at $107.85 total, the price of the Maintenance Package for all three would be $17.97".
So of not off. 

-Curt (June 12, 2007, 04:09 AM)

Nope - $107.85 already includes 20% for the first year of maintenance - that means the $107.85 consists of the software cost of $89.88 and the maintenance of $17.97 (which is 20% of $89.88).

So it is OFF not OF

It is just a very confusing way of pricing - it would be much more transparent and easy to understand if they simply said three copies of the software costs $89.88 + 20% annual maintenance subscription which is compulsory in the first year (but the software continues to work if you don't take out maintenance in subsequent years).

By the way I asked because I have three computers and there didn't seem to be any discount for multiple purchases on the webstore.

4627

General Software Discussion / Re: Returnil Virtual System

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 12, 2007, 04:17 AM »

Wow! 20% of the purchase price per year for maintenance is SWEET! I ASSUME (yes, I know, this makes an ASS out of U and ME) that where the Faronics rep has written

1-year maintenance included at $35.95, 20% off that price would be $5.99, which would be the price to pay to renew that maintenance package the following year.

OFF = OF? Otherwise rather than paying $5.99 per year for maintenance one would be looking at $39.95 less $5.99, which would be $29.96.

Just curious.

-Darwin (June 11, 2007, 10:37 PM)

LOL - 20% off is correct - the original price is the cost of the software + 20% for the first year of maintenance.

If you work out: ($39.95 / 120) * 20 you get $5.99 for the maintenance.

4628

Living Room / Re: An alternative to Duel Boot

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 12, 2007, 04:14 AM »

Eh? That has got to be a fake of some kind (even the Mac kiddies look puzzled in the comments below).

I suspect he has three OSes running at the same time - two of them in a virtual environment (like VMWare).

4629

General Software Discussion / Re: The great defrag shootout

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 12, 2007, 04:10 AM »

The problem (for me) with JkDefrag is that it lacks any controls in windows at all - you run it or you don't and if you do it processes ALL your hard disks in order. No matter how fast it is that is going to take a long time on my system.

The only alternative is to use a batch file to run it with command switches - not exactly user friendly but I'd guess many here could manage (esp. those of us who grew up on MS DOS).

Maybe a coding snack to produce a simple GUI to generate and execute the app with the correct switches would be a nice addition to the app.

4630

General Software Discussion / Re: Returnil Virtual System

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 06:12 PM »

I'd guess that it is much more likely to be caused by installing too many applications that hook into Explorer and the Shell.

Download ShellEx and have a look at what has been installed into your shell - I bet you will be surprised at the amount of stuff that appears there. If there is anything you find that you no longer use try uninstalling it from Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs.

You can use ShellEx to temporarily disable most of these things. It all looks very complicated but it is pretty easy to just disable everything and then re-enable stuff a bit a time.

I'd suggest you do that (ie. disable everything in ShellEx) and see if your problem is solved by opening My Documents - if it is you can re-enable extensions a few at a time and see when the problem reappears and so track down what is causing the problem. Just leave ShellEx open on screen and cloase all Explorer windows - enable a few items and then open My Documents and right click somewhere in the window - if it opens quickly and the menu pops up quickly you can be pretty sure everything is working so far, if not disable the things you just enabled and enable them again a couple at atime and check My Documents again.

It isn't always that simple - sometimes extension interfere with each other and you need to be a bit of a detective to work out which one is actually causing the problem.

If you establish which one is causing the problem see if you can figure out which application would have installed it and then uninstall that applicationa dn reinstall it - hopefully if something was corrupted it will be cured. If two apps are interefering with each other it can be more difficult and you may need to decide if you can live without one of them!

If you try this out and need some help post a screen shot.

Can I suggest you start a new thread as this is just a bit off topic!!!

4631

General Software Discussion / Re: Returnil Virtual System

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 05:34 PM »

Not really sure - it could be disk space on your main partition that is used in a transient and hidden manner. Some backup utilities do this sort of thing (eg. the one supplied by Iomega with their drives). These folders may or may not be visible to the user via Explorer but they are not designed for user tampering.

Alternatively, it could be a totally separate partition which is simply hidden from the user. These are quite common - certain manufacturers use them to keep a 'clean' factory settings setup to allow for quick and easy restoration of your system to the state in which it was supplied to you. Other software uses this sort of thing too to store quick access backups (Acronis True Image has a similar facility - which I don't particularly recommend in that particular instance, Symantec GoBack uses this idea). These parttions are not seen in general use (ie. they don't have a drive letter) but if you use a partition manager to look at your disk contents you can generally see them - usually with a special 'hidden' property enabled to stop windows assigning a drive letter. Sometimes these partitions are formatted in non-standard ways so that if you deliberately make them visible you will not be able to access them easily.

I don't know what method DeepFreeze or Returnil use but they must be using disk space in one form or another to record changes to your system - no system would have sufficient physical memory to sustain this sort of application if all changes were stored in RAM - eg. it would be quite easy to create a file that was too big to fit in memory (esp. if you do anything with video) and then everything would be stuffed.

4632

General Software Discussion / Re: Returnil Virtual System

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 04:55 PM »

That's what I thought

4633

General Software Discussion / Re: The great defrag shootout

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 04:54 PM »

Thanks - I didn't look at the download page because I figured I would stick with Perfect Disk.

The trouble with using more than one tool is that they all have different ideas on disk layout and importance of certain files so each time you run one and then the other they spend time reorganising each other's work.

Personally I think that once you have found a setup you are happy with it is probably best to stick with it - or move wholesale to a new system.

4634

General Software Discussion / Re: Faststone Image Capture now Shareware

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 04:21 PM »

I'll have to remember not to brush too close to my screen then 

4635

General Software Discussion / Re: Safari 3 for Windows

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 04:20 PM »

I don't even like Safari much on the Mac - why bother with it on Windows?

4636

General Software Discussion / Re: The great defrag shootout

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 04:18 PM »

I'm running PerfectDisk on my own machine and am quite curious about how it will fare. I'm guessing that it's not going to do that well - middle of the pack, anyway. Bets anyone?

-Darwin (June 11, 2007, 02:08 PM)

Perfect Disc 8 Pro seems to be his 'permanently installed' defragger. There isn't a separate review that I can see but he uses it as a benchmark and for good all round reliability - and doing what it says it does he seems happy. The only criticism seem to be:

• Doesn't seem to fully defrag the MFT (and can't reduce it's size)
• Doesn't automatically organise free space 100% effectively
• Leaves some files fragmented and sometimes splits a file around a fixed file.

The first and last are the most irritating to my mind - and I have noticed the third one on drives with large files. You can force better consolidation of free space but you can cook and eat a five course banquet while it does it!

4637

General Software Discussion / Re: Returnil Virtual System

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 03:24 PM »

Got a prompt response from Faronics about maintenance costs for single purchases of DeepFreeze. Here is the response in full (I have just removed personal contact data):

Dear Carol,

Thank you for contacting Faronics!

The cost of our Maintenance package is basically 20% off the total cost of your license. For example, if you buy 1 copy of the Deep Freeze Standard with 1-year maintenance included at $35.95, 20% off that price would be $5.99, which would be the price to pay to renew that maintenance package the following year. If you buy 3 licenses at $107.85 total, the price of the Maintenance Package for all three would be $17.97.

You can buy more than 1 license on our Online store. You just need to enter the number of licenses you want to buy in the Quantity box, and update your cart. We do not provide discount on licenses purchased on our Online store. Our volume pricing starts at 10 licenses and more. If you need 10 licenses or more, please contact us and one of our Sales Representative can provide you a quote.

I hope I answered all your questions. Feel free to contact us again if you have other inquiries.

Best regards,

Nathalie Bussieres
Customer Service Representative

4638

General Software Discussion / Re: The great defrag shootout

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 01:57 PM »

Interesting comment :

I was looking forward to reviewing PerfectDisk Rx Suite 1.0 by Raxco, since I have been using PerfectDisk Pro 8 for some time already, and found it to be pretty thorough, albeit stubborn and sluggish at times. I found out about the Rx Suite from the PerfectDisk blog. Going from PD8 to PDRx is like going from the sublime to the ridiculous. The less they market this product the longer Raxco will remain in business. It's that bad.
The first good point I noticed is that at $29.99 it's cheaper that PD8's $39.99. But it isn't worth the money: it's like PerfectDisk Lite with bugs, and it's a massive 25.8MB download. Almost every feature I tried didn't work properly.

Pretty much experience of people here daft enough to try it!

Interesting comments about DiskKeeper - what the heck are they playing at these days ???

4639

Living Room / Re: Sony in trouble - again ... this time the Church of England is gunning for them!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 12:31 PM »

I was tempted to say that the Bishop of Manchester must be a real profit.

4640

Living Room / Re: An alternative to Duel Boot

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 11:27 AM »

It would be fairly easy to build such a system with two motherboards - though you would need a custom built case to take two mobos! You'd also need lots of bucks to provide the serious amount of cooling required! Much cheaper and simpler to have two computers in separate boxes with a peripheral switch!

4641

Living Room / Re: Sony in trouble - again ... this time the Church of England is gunning for t

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 11:25 AM »

My comments must have had divine intervention ....

Now back to the atheism!

4642

Living Room / Re: An alternative to Duel Boot

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 10:53 AM »

So you basically want two separate computers on one motherboard? Not sure that will happen any time soon.

It may be semi-feasible by using hibernation - I know it isn't the perfect solution but it allows you to swap OSes much quicker than a full reboot.

4643

Living Room / Re: Very Good (Printed) Book Search Site

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 09:54 AM »

Wow - that's neat.

I put in a book and gave UK details - not only did it find 29 sources for the book but some were cheaper based in other countries! Not only that it checks used prices too.

Excellent find - I will definitely use it in future for researching prices.

Edit: One word of caution though - searching on an author doesn't necessarily bring up all possible titles (even when I know some of those titles are listed and available at Amazon).

Still a good first stop though - especially if using title search and pretty good on the "Used Book Search" option.

4644

General Software Discussion / Re: Faststone Image Capture now Shareware

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 08:41 AM »

Faststone Image Capture now $19.95 and includes 'lifetime' updates. Obviously didn't generate the expected revenue if the price has been reduced so soon. It also means that it is 50% of the price of SnagIt - which is presumably the main competitor in this shareware arena.

4645

Living Room / Re: Flash Game: Bible Fight

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 08:05 AM »

Well, works here. It's Moses' most awesome power, so it's a bit tricky to do... Another thing, if a character changes sides, the keys switch. So if Moses looks to the left, the raining frogs power is done via left,left,down,down,x.

-wr975 (June 11, 2007, 06:17 AM)

Oh grief ... life is too short!

4646

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommend Vista CD Burner

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 04:08 AM »

AShampoo Burning Studio 7 is Vista compatible and is very good (a number of us here have adopted it to get rid of the Nero bloat):

see http://www.ashampoo....=2&idstring=1110

It is very easy to use.

for details but use these offer links if you want to buy:

https://www.donation...51.msg61595#msg61595

I just tried them and they still work - currently the offer is $19.99 but it seems to change regularly.

AShampoo has the key feature of being able to verify your disc - which I personally find essential and is one of the reasons I stuck with Nero so long. Too many burning apps omit this feature (and IMHO makes them useless).

Actually I just noticed Burning Studio 6 is Vista compatible too and that is available for free on some magazine disks. Maybe some kind person (Grorgy) could tell you which mag and edition. It was mention in this thread. Trouble is that free versions don't often come with updates and it may be pre-Vista (I had version 5 on that basis). If you are going to buy a copy then version 7 is the same price at the discounted price.


For basic burning purposes ImgBurn (mentioned above) is great - but it isn't good for building DVDs, compiling disk contents can be a bit complex and it doesn't support CD ripping. It does have a verify function though.

4647

Living Room / Re: Flash Game: Bible Fight

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 11, 2007, 04:00 AM »

I saw that and is why I am confused - I couldn't get it to work at all !

4648

General Software Discussion / Re: DivX Pro for free

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 10, 2007, 05:27 PM »

I did a Goggle search on "Download DivX Movies" and rather a lot of links appeared (not all Stage6).

Can't say I have tried any of them because I don't generally download Movies but there seems to be a fair amount of choice - though how much is legal ....

4649

General Software Discussion / Re: DivX Pro for free

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 10, 2007, 04:44 PM »

I know DivX is a closed format - but only in the sense that MPEG and other common formats are.

One of the advantages of DivX is the growing number of applications that support DivX as a format and also the huge number of devices out there that can play DivX discs.

4650

General Software Discussion / Re: DivX Pro for free

« Last post by Carol Haynes on June 10, 2007, 03:17 PM »

Simplest solution then is to use some imaging software to backup the old hard disc (something like Acronis TrueImage will do that from a bootable CD so you don't need a working windows - in fact you can use that to back up at file level too - though it would be incredibly slow).

Quickest way would be to put in an extra hard disc or use a USB hard disc. If you have 2 computers with LAN cards you could use TrueImage to save your backup to another computer which would make it convenient to work with. Once you have an image you can extract the files from the newly installed windows by mounting the image file - it then appears as another (virtual) hard disc and you can use copy and paste or drag files in Windows Explorer.