Recent Posts

4826

General Software Discussion / Re: Top 3 programs you use

« Last post by Darwin on August 30, 2007, 12:06 PM »

Tom - thanks for the post about CBC - looks really useful!

4827

General Software Discussion / Re: Check&Get support blows chunks

« Last post by Darwin on August 30, 2007, 09:57 AM »

But even if the software is paid for, I object to seeing us call a piece of software "shitware", even as a joke, because we didnt get an answer after 3 weeks... it feels unfair.

Fair comment and guilty as charged. I regret making the off the cuff remark about shitware (to clarify, I had been thinking about the shitty support forum on the shitware site, not the software one, but no matter) in my previous post - Check&Get is anything but shitware, it is a very fine piece of software and in the past I have a number of very pleasant e-mail exchanges with the author, so I am beginning to suspect that your observations about spam may be correct.

While I accept the argument that spam may be the culprit here, and that I may be dealing with a single person developing Check&Get (I am certain that I am), I don't feel that it is unreasonable for an end-user to expect to be able to reach the developer and to receive a reply. My initial message was sent through the official website's support via a form for that purpose complete with my registration details, which should have warranted at least a canned response letting me know that it was received. Admittedly, I was redirected after submission to a "thank you" page, but nothing to my e-mail address. Surely, the inclusion of my registration details - entered into a discrete field on the form - should have been enough to elevate the message from "likely spam" to "likely spam that should be manually checked and verified before being deleted forever"? Now, the message may have been received, read, and the issues raised even added to a "to do list", but I am firmly of the belief that if someone takes the time to write and suggest improvements to your product, with the intention of improving the product and making it a more attractive option for future consumers, a reply is required, even if only to say thank you for the suggestions.

I would genuinely like to see Check&Get continue to be developed and improved, ie this wasn't intended to be a petulant snivel suggesting that the application is crap because it doesn't do what I want it to do - I love using it already and merely sought to provide my informed input, as a long-time daily user, to make it even better. This does not in any way mean that it is not a solid, reliable, application as it stands. Look at the strides made between Check&Get 2 - reviewed in the DC Website monitoring review - and Check&Get 3. I believe that Ken and I have made a number of suggestions that, if implemented progressively over a number of future builds, would result in an app that represents an equally great step forward over the current version. I am also of the opinion (based in no way on any knowledge of, or expertise in, coding!) that the majoirty of the changes that we have mentioned are not significant from a developmental perspective. I accept, of course, that I may be very naive in asserting this. Nevertheless, there it is...

I suspect that this argument, if carried forward, would look very much like the "software piracy is acceptable vs. Software piracy is unacceptable" argument that comes up from time to time on DC and goes around in circles.

4828

General Software Discussion / Re: Program (or 2.0 site) to track my life, like a Gantt

« Last post by Darwin on August 29, 2007, 06:44 PM »

Cool! I think this is a great idea and a really interesting thread - I'll be following it with interest as I could use something like this myself. Now, where'd I leave my 3 year old?!

4829

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 29, 2007, 03:35 PM »

OmniPage Pro 16 comes with PDF Create and PDF Converter 4 (which are essentially PDF Converter Professional 4) and I am much happier with the GUI over version 15 - they've improved it a lot (I too found OP 15 confusing to navigate around).

4830

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 29, 2007, 12:26 PM »

Some time ago i noticed that the more "cleaning/repairing" programs i ran, the less stable my windows OS became.
So now i never run any registry cleaners, disk check repairers, etc.

I think the reason is this:
Inside every computer that has Windows OS installed, is a tiny little miniature bill gates.  And when you run these types of programs you make it very angry and it throws a fit and starts trashing things.  That's just my theory,

-mouser (August 29, 2007, 05:25 AM)

Can't comment on your hypothesis about the homonculus in every machine, but I can verify 100% your experiences with any form of system cleaner - be it a registry cleaner, temp files cleaner or what have you. Using one without extreme caution is guaranteed to break one or more programs on my system, usually requiring reinstallation and/or reactivation to get functioning again.

4831

General Software Discussion / Re: Check&Get support blows chunks

« Last post by Darwin on August 29, 2007, 12:17 PM »

Just a quick note in response to some comments here:

1. I'm hoping the developer is on vacation as well (as alluded to in my original post) but Ken has been trying for some time to reach him without success.
2. Website Watcher looks fantastic - indeed some of these suggsetions were inspired by it. However, having paid for a licence for Check&Get and having invested two years of my life into configuring it and observing ways in which it might be improved, I would like to make a concerted effort to engage in a dialogue with the developer first, before jumping ship. It's not like Check&Get doesn't work, it just needs some tweaking to make it "great".
3. Yes, I had noticed that it's been over a year since dis was active here (though honestly compels me admit that I hadn't quite twigged to the fact that it's been so long; I thought it was more like 8 or 9 months...), but I was hoping that he might be monitoring DC nonetheless.  If he's not, the dialogue generated here isn't wasted! And if he never responds I can always drop a load over at Renegade's magnificent shitware site (er, pun intended  ).

4832

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quality Comparison: 8 x freeware PDF Readers / Viewers

« Last post by Darwin on August 29, 2007, 12:10 AM »

The BitsduJour offer is now live - $34.99 for the Standard version of PDF Converter.

4833

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

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 11:44 PM »

PDF Professional 4 is a a quantum leap over version 3, J-Mac. It's much more stable, much quicker rendering pages, and integrates better with Office. It also plays nice wtih other third party software, something that drove me batty with version 3 (I *think* it was WindowBlinds 5 and Tenebril's SpyCatcher that sent it into a spin every time)...

4834

General Software Discussion / Re: Top 3 programs you use

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 11:38 PM »

I'm curious about the chapter-by-chapter add-in as well...

4835

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: xplorer², a powerful windows file manager and explorer replacement / alternative

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 07:50 PM »

Yes that is the current version T&C, not the one in my older version.
Either way, shareware is an "honesty" commitment and there are no obligations, legal or otherwise.
I'll leave it at that as this topic is drifting off Windows exploder.

-787 (August 28, 2007, 07:42 PM)

Fine, but you directed everyone to the website featuring the current installer (which IS shareware) - why claim that it is free for personal use when this is no longer the case? As for shareware being an honesty commitment, I wonder how you'd feel if your employer used the same attitude WRT paying your wages?

4836

Living Room / Re: I wanna hurt this guy!

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 07:37 PM »

Ah, that makes sense! Let us know if there is anything that we can do to help troubleshoot your problem.

4837

General Software Discussion / Re: SubmitToTab - a Firefox add-on

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 07:33 PM »

Nope - didn't work, opened a new instalnce of this page when I tried a search from the field above and held down the shift key while clicking "search". Opera 1, Maxthon 0...

4838

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: xplorer², a powerful windows file manager and explorer replacement / alternative

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 07:30 PM »

Hmmm... I thought it was shareware. Interesting, I'll take another look.

4839

General Software Discussion / Re: Check&Get support blows chunks

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 06:31 PM »

FWIW, here's the list of things we sought to "improve":

First, it would be nice to see an implementation of "live", progressive search in Check&Get. I have really appreciated this feature in applications such as Maxthon 2, Evernote and Directory Opus. It would be far less cumbersome than the present requirement that the user bring up a search window, specify criteria, initiate it, etc.

I love the ability to mark sites as read. What I miss is the abiiity to mark sites that I have clicked on as "unread" a la E-mail clients such as Outlook. Often I have over 30 sites to review in Check&Get and I'll click on one link but get distracted by something else that catches my eye. By the time I finish with the distraction I forget what I was looking at. If I could select a hotkey to mark a link unread before I migrate away from it this wouldn't be a problem.

Another useful feature would be a context menu item or a toolbar button instructs Check&Get to check just my hot sites. This way, I don't have check them all (I have 216 sites that I track) and I don't have to manually select the hot sites from amongst my 20 or so folders.

On the subject of folders, I'd like to be able create folders like the default ones, such as Hot Sites ("Marked"), Changed, Checking Now, etc. What I would like is the ability to create additional folders and then specify criteria for them, so that when I click on that folder, it shows the bookmarks that meet the criteria that I have set. I guess this is a bit like tagging.

Another request is to add the ability to monitor changes to FTP sites. This would be a big time saver, though I realise that it would require that Check@Get have some sort of facility to use my credentials to log-in.

Is it possible to have Check&Get ignore parts of web pages for the purposes of reporting sites as changed but still have those changes highlighted, so that when the part of the page that I AM monitoring changes and I am alerted to it, I can see what else has changed as well?

I'd like to be able to specify criteria for what I consider to be a duplicate URL  - such as anything from the same base domain, etc. Another thing I'd like to be able to modify is when the time cycle begins, so I might set it to check a particular site at 6 am, rather than just specifying how often it is checked.

Quite a few of the sites that I monitor return errors and I have to manually reselect them and check for changes. Is it already possbile to set a delay and then have Check&Get automatically recheck them? If not, could this be added? It would be very useful.

I'd like Check&Get to automatically display the first highlighted change in a page when it opens the snapshot up in the browser tab and then, at the press of a hotkey, move to the second change, and so on. Website Watcher has this feature and it is extremely handy. Basically, once you've examined the first change, you can have it take you directly to the next change so that you don't need to wade though all the text that has not changed. This makes it really simple to see what has changed and where those changes are. I realize that a workaround for this exists in the form of using the "Report of Changes" tab, but it is often difficult to appreciate the changes when you are not able to view them in context, and switching back and forth between the two tabs and manually scrolling through the page can be cumbersome on large and involved websites.

Finally, I recall being able to turn on/off the pop-up notification that appears when a webpage has changed. I like the visual notification but find the fact that Check&Get steals the focus of my computer really annoying. I use TweakUIXP to disable focus stealing but the setting never "sticks" (that is, I have to go in and reset this every time) and I often forget to do it. I'd like to first ask if the option to disable the notifications is still available (I can no longer find it) and if so, how do I access it? Second, I'd like to request that there be an option added to a future release to limit Check&Get's popups from stealing focus. This way, I can have my cake and eat it too - have the notification popup without it stealing focus.

Anyone else who uses Check&Get have any comment/anything to add?

4840

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: xplorer², a powerful windows file manager and explorer replacement / alternative

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 06:21 PM »

Do you mean that Total Commander is free if you are willing to tolerate the nag screen? If so what you are really saying is that it is easy to use beyond the end of your trial period if you are willing to put up with the nag prompt... If you like it enough to use, throw the developer some money to keep development going!

4841

Living Room / Re: How do you organise your 'My Documents' folder

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 06:16 PM »

Well.. Let's see:

PaintShop Pro (a different folder for each version)
IdeaMason
SoftMaker Office 2006
Intervideo WinDVD
DVDFab Platinum
PaperPort
Book Collector
MP3 Collector
Music Collector
Photo Collector
Azureus
ClipMate
Endnote
FinePrint
TextNotes Pro
Do-Organizer
Datamystic software
GOMPlayer
Stuff-It
Snapfire
NetSnippets
ObjectDock
Scansoft PDF Pro
SnagIt
SpellCatcher
TrueLaunchBar
WhereIsIt
Zoner Studio

That's a rough list - I may have missed some!

4842

Living Room / Re: I wanna hurt this guy!

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 06:10 PM »

Your machine isn't running an i386 processor, is it? Surely it's at least a Pentium of some flavour - that must be a typo - i586? Anyway, that is disappointing and I hope you get it sorted out soon!

4843

General Software Discussion / Check&Get support - THREAD UPDATED

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 01:53 PM »

I'm fighting mad. Mean, mad, vicious  . Grrr... Hear me roar!

Check&Get is a very useful app. Unfortunately, suggestions for improvements and feature requests are met with stony silence.

Ken and I collaborated on a polite, and overwhelmingly positive, e-mail in which we enumerated perhaps five areas that we felt could be improved in Check&Get 3 and I submitted it under my name to the developer via the support form on his website. Silence. We waited a week and then I submitted the same e-mail directly to his support e-mail address, writing from my own e-mail address - the one that he should have on file as I used it to register Check&Get. Another week has passed and we have yet to receive so much as a "thank you for contacting support" canned response. This is both disappointing and infuriating. Considerable time has been spent using the application, more time spent thinking about ways that it might be improved, and yet more time composing a tactful and positively framed e-mail to suggest ways in which Check&Get might leave the ranks of the merely "good" or "adequate" and join the ranks of "must have" software. No one at Check&Get can even be motivated to send us an e-mail telling us to mind our own business, and yet that is the message that has been delivered.

I hope that the developer has been unable to check his website/e-mail for a few weeks and that this poor showing is aberrant and not indicative of an attitude that is hostile to constructive criticism. I know that the developer has been active here in the past, posting under the username dis and seemed quite receptive to suggestions.

dis, if you're still monitoring these forums, how do you respond?

Pissed in Courtenay.

4844

General Software Discussion / Re: SubmitToTab - a Firefox add-on

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 01:29 PM »

Oh... does in Maxthon, though (I think! Drat - forms, forms everywhere and not a single one to test this on... I'll have to go looking).

4845

Living Room / Re: Deja Vu: More Sony Rootkits (They just don't learn)

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 01:26 PM »

Bastards.

4846

Living Room / Re: I wanna hurt this guy!

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 12:34 PM »

Yes, I have been forced to replace my darling Outlook with Outlook Express (my Office 2003 will not repair / re-install) until I manage to repair this XP or get a new PC.

This sounds ominious - I thought that ths was a relatively new PC?

4847

Living Room / Re: I wanna hurt this guy!

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 12:10 PM »

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.

SpamBayes will allow you to check on this kind of information as well. It's been flawless for me, with no false positives, for years. PopFile sounds interesting, too (never tried it).

4848

General Software Discussion / Re: Appget - user-run software update program

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 11:57 AM »

I agree and uninstalled that too but you're looking for feedback so that might be worth it.

-justice (August 28, 2007, 10:35 AM)

Yeah, that thought has occurred to me - I should write to them about this - it's the whole point of the beta!

4849

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Quality Comparison: 8 x freeware PDF Readers / Viewers

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 11:56 AM »

Damn! I just lost a huge post - you guys are probably lucky!

urlwolf -

So Darwin, is nuance v.4 rock solid? Any random crashes? They don't seem to have a trial version...

In my usage yes, rock solid. No issues at all with two different installations. The no trial is a pain, but they do have a 30 day no hassle return policy that I have used two or three times without any drama whatsoever. Now, they do lose marks for support, because they have a paid model but two things to note - I've had to contact support because of a conflict b/w PDF Converter 3 (previous version) and WindowBlinds 5) and have received it without being charged and two the software is solid enough that it shouldn't be an issue.

NOTE WELL: If you take advantage of one of the numerous offers for OmniPage Pro 16 (or 15 if you can find it on sale) you get PDF Converter Pro 4 with it included. The online sale price is often $99 - in fact I got an e-mail offering it to me at that price this morning (I can send you the link as it's supposed to be for returning customers but it takes you to a vanilla purchase link that contains no information about me!). The deal that I was offered today includes PaperPort 11 Standard and something called MediaRecovery (or some such thing). If you go through the process to buy it and then cancel at the last minute, they'll often take another $10 off AND this is still under the umbrella of the 30 day return policy... Depends on how much OCR power you need and if you want the additional features in PDF Converter Professional... 

Another big player from the past, that I don't hear much about anymore, is Jaws PDF.

EDIT: Darwin lets this post incubate for six months before returning to fix the html tag...

4850

Living Room / Re: I wanna hurt this guy!

« Last post by Darwin on August 28, 2007, 11:39 AM »

One other thing I did when I got worried about security/fed up with spam was switch from Outlook Express to Outlook. It's not to bad a learning curve and I could never go back now. I dimly recall you talking about having switched in the other direction, Curt, but am not sure. Anyway, I bring it up now because of one feature: in Outlook Express if you enable auto-preview it auto-previews in all folders. In Outlook you can customize this feature for every folder. It's useful when you are dealing with spam. I have my "unread mail" folder setup W/O autopreview along with my junk mail and junk suspects folders. This way I can tell at a glance what is where and act accordingly. Likewise if I leave my main mail folder open and come back to Outlook later there is a reduced chance of me viewing malicious content because chances are high that it's already been diverted into either junk mail/junk suspects.

If you're worried about newsgroups and such, I initially went with Newsgator (still have a current licence) but found over time that I actually don't mind having to open up Outlook Express for newsgroups and Feeddemon  for RSS, even this actually kept me wed to OE for about a year beyond when I knew I should make the change... Just my take on this...