Recent Posts

4876

General Software Discussion / Re: Xara Xtreme Pro / New(ish) Version

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 22, 2007, 07:03 AM »

Yes - it has been available for a while now (I bought mine before Christmas and the CD arrived at the end of January).

Xara have a habit of releasing software once it is stable but they don't produce the CDROMs until they have had it out in general use for a couple of months. That way any bugs that are found are fixed and an updated version is supplied via the mail.

Generally the bug fixes are pretty minor (or esoteric) as they generally have pretty solid release software (and have since they were founded in the 80s) so this makes sense - though it can be a little disconcerting for new customers to be told the CDROM won't arrive for 3 months (I think that was the longest I waited). Having said that the download version is the full version and you have access to all the tutorial materials and extras via the built in updater.

4877

General Software Discussion / Re: Photo panorama creation

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 22, 2007, 06:57 AM »

Sorry everyone - I really haven't forgotten about this but I have had numerous problems (including a period of illness and depression - now hopefully sorted) which have meant it got left on the back burner.

Not least death of my previous computer - and numerous problems with my new system (mobo died and had to be replaced twice!!) and a graphics card hard to be RMAed because the fan went within 2 months. All in all it has been a bit of a nightmare and now for some reason my system is running strangely. All this got rather tangled up with Christmas and the New Year and has only really been fully resolved in the last couple of weeks. Now I just have to work out how to get my system running properly again without having to do another reinstall!

... I did actually start writing some stuff at one point and spent some time with at least 4 of the applications I have review copies of.
I haven't got around to reinstalling all the panorama apps - and at the moment I am not sure I want to.

4878

Find And Run Robot / Re: not freeware !!!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 20, 2007, 06:12 AM »

Who says the definition of donationware is 'free but donation requested' and equally valid definition could be 'donation required if you use it (however small)'

On that basis software on this site is available as donationware - but also totally free - the only restriction being a forum registration and downloading a key periodically. Even if you don't register with the site or download a key the software still works without any restrictions.

Given the rate which this software is developed and new releases are produced is it unreasonable to ask people to register?

4879

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for Outlook Add-On to remove duplicates

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 19, 2007, 11:18 AM »

You may also want to check out this thread ...

https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=5204.0

4880

General Software Discussion / Re: Perfect Disc Discount (25% for 48 hours)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 17, 2007, 04:08 PM »

Hmm ... in the UK you get 24.90 UKP + 3.97 UKP in VAT (a total of 28.87 UKP) .... at current exchange rates $39.99 = £20.59

At least they haven't use $1 = £1 which is a typical US trick ...

4881

General Software Discussion / Perfect Disc Discount (25% for 48 hours)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 17, 2007, 10:56 AM »

Just received the following email if it is of interest to anyone ...

The order page link is http://www.raxco.com...cts_all_download.cfm

and the 25% discount code HAPPYGREEN

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, Raxco will make your system faster and keep it fragmentation free for 25% off of the regular PerfectDisk 8 prices. This is the perfect time to pick up new or additional licenses of the worlds #1 performance utility. This online only code will expire at midnight on Saturday (3/17).   

Read what users are saying on Download.com about both PerfectDisk 8 and Diskeeper 2007. Or, Google both products in the newsgroups and blogs to get the real scoop. If you want a tool that's primarily based around marketing, the choice is simple. If you want a tool was developed for the quality and performance that today's power-users demand, and is the choice by more corporate enterprises and Microsoft MVPs than all other defrag solutions, PerfectDisk 8 is for you.

See why PerfectDisk 8 is a big step above other defrag options: PerfectDisk Comparison Charts   

The 25% code HAPPYGREEN can be used to discount PerfectDisk 8 Pro, PerfectDisk 8 Server, the PerfectDisk Small Office Packs, or to further discount the prices on the PerfectDisk Volume Calculator. You can also use the code to purchase PerfectDisk for Exchange or one of the PerfectDisk Bundles.

To take advantage of this special online only 25%, 2-day offer, just follow the simple steps below:

Purchase directly from our Online Store and enter coupon code HAPPYGREEN in your cart.
For volume purchases, use the PerfectDisk Volume Discount Calculator and enter coupon code HAPPYGREEN in your cart.
If you already have a competitive defragger or a maintenance contract in place, contact me to trade up to PerfectDisk for less.         
For additional enterprise license discounts, contact me as well to speak with our enterprise license team. 
* Code HAPPYGREEN does not apply to previous purchases and will expire at midnight on March 17, 2007.   

If you have any technical questions, contact the technical support team here. If I can do anything to help from the sales side, please let me know.

Best Regards,





Wendy Clontz     
Raxco Software, Inc.
Toll Free (800) 546-9728
Direct: (301) 519-7806
[email protected]
Web: www.raxco.com
PerfectDisk 8: Winner Windows IT Pro Readers' Choice
 

If you would like to remove yourself from receiving future e-mails about updates to PerfectDisk 8, please click here. 

 

4882

General Software Discussion / Re: Your favorite Registry Viewer + Editor?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 16, 2007, 08:50 PM »

Patteo - I agree with you wholeheartedly. I love Resplendent Registry Manager and whilst the free Lite version is great i really think it is worth buying the full Pro version.

Not only is the search brilliantly fast but you can store bookmarks, compress your registry and do simple one click backups. It also has an excellent replace function. On top o that you can edit registries on other network machines (if you have permission) and also conveniently edit .REG files.

4883

Living Room / Re: cost of running a pc (in the UK)?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 15, 2007, 03:37 AM »

I got the 4ms of that benq for my husband, and he loves it.
I find that 19" at 1280x1024 feels very pixellated to me, but it doesn't bother him at all. Even in games.

-iphigenie (March 14, 2007, 06:42 PM)

I find that surprising - maybe it is my eyes but I can only see the pixels if I use a hand lens! 1280x1024 is the native resolution of the monitor so any other resolution is likely to look more pixellated rather than less as it would be interpolated.

4884

Living Room / Re: cost of running a pc (in the UK)?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 14, 2007, 05:22 PM »

I have just taken the plunge into LCD and am really impressed.

The one I bought was on special offer (in the UK) at http://www.dabs.com/....aspx?QuickLinx=437X

It is SOOOOO much better than my iiyama CRT display (which was good in its day) and I am seriously thinking of buying a second while they are at that price!

4885

General Software Discussion / Re: Can you upgrade, inspite a broken installer?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 13, 2007, 06:11 AM »

Have you tried a repair install of XP ? Just boot from the CD (if you haven't got one then borrow one from somewhere) and follow the prompts for a repair install.

It SHOULD (and that's the big word here) install XP again over the top whilst retaining data and programme settings.

Personally my experience is that you are much better off doing a backup and then formatting the hard disc and starting from scratch with a clean slate. No amount of tinkering ever seems to fix a fundamentally flawed installation of Windows.

4886

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: free eXpert PDF 3 - Full commercial app, as sold for £40

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 12, 2007, 07:57 PM »

I use (and have advocated) Mike Lin's Startup control Panel but recently have had a number of issues with parameters being dropped when you temporarily disable items.

It seems to be abandonware these days (as do the rest of Mike's utilities last time I bothered to look - also his forum has now gone because it attracted so much rubbish and was pretty much left unattended) so I would caution 'use with care' unless you simply want to delete startup items.

4887

Developer's Corner / Re: Registry Help...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 12, 2007, 07:14 PM »

Not a programmatic method but the simplest way you can set up or alteer a file association is to use Tools > Folder Options > File Types in Windows Explorer.

If you want to set it up so that the user doesn't have to do anything you will need to set it up as part of the installation routine.

4888

General Software Discussion / Re: Desktop chaos please help

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 05, 2007, 02:36 AM »

Basically dragging a folder to the screen edge is equivalent to adding a new toolbar to the taskbar.

If you drag one folder to the left and another to the right you can then drag the toolbars wherever you want them onscreen (even the middle). If the both end up on the same edge they can share the same column (or row) and be separated by a spacer (it gets there automatically).

If you want them to look like apps just right click on the toolbar and set it to View>small icons and turn off Show Text and Show Title.

Personally I prefer to retain the toolbar at the bottom on the task bar. It takes up no space on the desktop at all and has the advantage that any folders in the list produce a cascading menu system rather than opening folders in Explorer.

4889

General Software Discussion / Re: Desktop chaos please help

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

Hey - you learn something new everyday

4890

General Software Discussion / Re: Desktop chaos please help

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 04, 2007, 03:21 PM »

You're welcome - glad to be of use

4891

General Software Discussion / Re: Firewalls - please, i can't be bothered.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 04, 2007, 11:06 AM »

A sad story, Carol. 

I think the answer is to be found in the settings.

-Curt (March 04, 2007, 09:51 AM)

That is the sad thing - each time it was installed I accepted the default 'easy' setup and usually accepted the default suggestions for known applications when they popped up. For others I either accepted or denied access to inbound or outbound access depending on what I thought of the app making the request.

This seems to me about as basic as it gets for using Outpost and yet version 4 continually BSODed even on fresh winodws installations on more than one system. I spent a long time in the early days of version 3 with BSODs too but they eventually disappeared when Agnitum finally produced a stable version.

I am sure the ideas behind Outpost are really good - I just really wish that Agnitum actually tested their software before making it live - instead they appear to run a live Beta program without telling anyone that is what they are doing. Not only do they charge for buggy new versions but they seem to move on to the next buggy version as soon as they manage to get the thing running stable. OK I could go back to the last build in version 3 which did work but I really got sick of being told it was time to upgrade to version 4 (and I couldn't see any way to turn off program updates without disabling all updating).

4892

General Software Discussion / Re: How to edit .xpi, and with what?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 04, 2007, 07:02 AM »

This webpage may add some useful info and an overview of how it all works:

http://developer.moz.../Extension_Packaging

4893

General Software Discussion / Re: Desktop chaos please help

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 04, 2007, 06:41 AM »

I dump everything in a single folder on the desktop - then right click on the toolbar and add a new toolbar by pointing it at that folder. You then get a cascading menu (a bit like the start menu which you can drag stuff about in) and because the source folder is on the desktop it is easy to drag stuff in there, open the folder and reorganise stuff as you want.

It also has the advantage that you can keep your destop clean so you can use it as a genuinely useful temporary dumping ground!

4894

General Software Discussion / Re: Firewalls - please, i can't be bothered.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 04, 2007, 04:48 AM »

Maybe there really are people who can stay out of trouble for ever even though they are running a free firewall. Maybe. I know I would have had a hole lot more of troubles if I gone the free way. But I really think there is no such thing as a free meal. Somehow you are going to pay in the end. And I have never for a moment been sorry that I paid for Outpost PRO - it is THE firewall for a personel computer at home. I started with version 2.5 and is now using 4.0

Any problems with Outpost usually comes from the setup you have chosen. If you avoid the most strict settings, you will ALMOST never be troubled with this firewall. You will hardly know it is there, until you try to run some poison.

Outpost runs in perfect harmony with Eset NOD32 Antivirus.

Outpost PRO 4, and NOD32 2.7 :   

-Curt (March 04, 2007, 04:16 AM)

Certainly not my experience with Outpost - I have had anything but a smooth ride with both versions 3 and 4 on 3 computers - to the point now where I have given up on a full 12 month subscription before it even started (they would not refund even though the subscription had not started).

I am not alone and lots of users refuse to use version 4 because of instability issues.

The biggest issue I had was system instability and BSODs - when it did work it was a real system hog (and that was with most of the optional plugins disabled).

Oh and by the way I was running it with NOD32 ...

Now I am running using WinXP firewall behind a router firewall and had no problems.

It really does beat me why no company can addess the issue that seems to be the golden grail:

... a low impact firewall that is a firewall and ONLY a firewall!


I would like to filter outgoing traffic but until someone suggests a suitable product I am not going to bother any more.

4895

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review: Altiris SVS

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 03, 2007, 07:00 PM »

Great article - thanks

4896

General Software Discussion / Re: Photoshop - add supported online editor, soon...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on March 02, 2007, 06:40 PM »

I suspect there will be file size restrictions too to save bandwidth - which means it will probably only be usable for web images.

4897

Mouser's Zone / Re: IDEA - Webpage archiving

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 28, 2007, 10:55 AM »

Thanks for the info but if you look back I started this thread in 2005 and bought a copy of the Pro version back then for half price.

I must say the one thing I am not impressed with is the lack of any active development. In the last two years there have been no updates at all and their extension for Firefox doesn't support recent versions (though it does seem to work if you just ignore version checkeing when you install it or update Firefox). This is very annoying for a piece of software that is really quite expensive.

4898

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Live Messenger ads serve up malware

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 27, 2007, 03:35 AM »

Shame it isn't available for download from the official site ... trouble is if you download it elsewhere how do you know if it is 'what it says on the box'?

4899

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Live Messenger ads serve up malware

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 26, 2007, 07:15 PM »

Carol, I think you are referring to the feature that let's you run multiple instances of messenger. The only client I know of that can do what you want is Trillian.

-Nighted (February 26, 2007, 04:02 PM)

Thanks - simple solutions are the best

Re Illegal - why? OK it may violate the MS EULA for WLM but that is a civil issue not a criminal issue and it would mean MS would have to prosecute individuals who use the patch - seems unlikely that it would be worth their while some how!

4900

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Live Messenger ads serve up malware

« Last post by Carol Haynes on February 26, 2007, 03:16 PM »

I prefer A-Patch myself, but you may prefer the other.

-Nighted (February 22, 2007, 03:54 PM)

As I understand it A-Patch lets you set up WLM to be accessed from different hotmail accounts (there is an option during the patching) - but how exactly does it work? I can't seem to find any way to login with more than one ID at a time ???