Recent Posts

501

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Armando on October 15, 2010, 12:00 PM »

About Archivarius... I can tell you that Archivarius picks everything up, including the Spinbitz book!   It's also very lean and pretty speedy in general.

However,
1- The index is big (maybe that's because of spinbitz...   )
2- And... Well the UI is certainly not as well designed than X1
3- Outlook integration is poor
4- no real time monitoring (which has some advantages, but it would be nice to be offered the choice... At least for some folders...)

Isn't annoying that software is almost always about... compromises?

502

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Armando on October 15, 2010, 11:47 AM »

 
That was quick!
I wonder if X1 has (had...  ) a setting preventing it to index the content of files bigger than 10MB or something. That could've been something to check.
But your computer is running quieter, cooler and probably faster, which is not a negligible thing.

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General Software Discussion / Re: What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

« Last post by Armando on October 15, 2010, 12:26 AM »

I reinstalled the latest version of X1, was thrilled/surprised to find that my license still works, and it's been flawless. My only quibble is that my harddrive and fan both go nuts every so often, I expect when X1 is updating. I also installed the latest versions of Archivarius and dtSearch. Settled on X1 because it creates an index that is 30% smaller than dtSearch and half the size of the one created by Archivarius. X1 also integrates with the search bar in the start menu.

-Darwin (October 14, 2010, 06:30 PM)

Yes, Archivarius is on the heavy side when it comes to the index size. Plus, it's still a real hog when it comes to indexing Outlook (here at least...).

But the fact that X1 make your fan and hardrive go nuts means that uses other kind of resources...

Could you do a little test for me ?

Pic your biggest *.doc or pdf... Or there's this large weird pdf that you could download : Spinbitz - Interface Philosophy - Mathematics and Nondual Rational-Empiricism), and search for a sentence/expression located at the end of the document, let's say after page 479. Does X1 find it ? 

In the past, I've had problems with X1 not indexing documents fully. I wonder if the fixed that.

504

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup

« Last post by Armando on October 14, 2010, 10:18 PM »

I had a look at your web site... Impressive. (I like how it looks like too... and I also like bvckup's web site AND its UI. Very slick, simple, to the point.)

So you're also the coder behind Hamachi ? (Congratulations, really, if that's the case...). The way LogMeIn uses it certainly proves its efficiency.

505

General Software Discussion / Re: Synchronizing a few folders between two machines?

« Last post by Armando on October 14, 2010, 10:00 PM »

@Armando - not to mention it was made in Canada

-apankrat (October 14, 2010, 08:38 PM)

Really !?  Cool ! 

506

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup

« Last post by Armando on October 14, 2010, 09:50 PM »

Yes, very interesting.

I'm currently testing bvckup's latest beta.

1- I'm syncing a 215 GB partition to an external HD, USB 2, not the fastest let me tell you. The first Sync took a while, but that was completely expected. Files first needed to be copied fully.

2- RAM usage started at around 15 MB, peaked at 90 MB during syncing. CPU usage was more than acceptable. I could still do stuff while the syncing was taking place. No errors whatsoever, shadow copy is ON, which means that every single file got copied, even the "in use" ones.

3- subsequent syncings :

a- RAM usage stays at around 60 MB afterwards. Similar to other apps in that category -- more than syncback, much less than Oops!Backup.

b- fast as hell. Less than 7 min each time, about 4 min for the last one.  Here's what the log file says after the last sync (only parts of the modified files are being copied, thanks to the delta copying technology) :

2010-10-14  22:16:14  Job [SyncAllDocXimeta] completed in 4 minutes 11 seconds with 0 errors, copied 228 KB out of 1221 MB in 49 files

Just as you guys know... 228 KB out of 1221 MB (1 250 304). That's about 0.018 % of the total size. Isn't that great ? Instead of copying the whole 1221 MB like SyncBack does, only 228 KB were copied (i.e : the modified portion of the files.)

I don't backup to any network drive, but if I was, it'd be good news.

I need to do more testing of course.... have to somewhat moderate my enthusiasm... but it seems that this could finally replace Syncback or SyncToy as a syncing solution. Especially if apankrat implements versioning and exclusion of folders for the scanning part (when folders are actually excluded from copying)... Oh, and proxy support.  

 

507

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by Armando on October 14, 2010, 04:43 PM »

Will see if bvckup (for syncing exclusively) + syncback (for basic versionning) + autover (granular versionning for some very specific folders) could be a nice partnership.

508

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by Armando on October 14, 2010, 04:41 PM »

I exchanged a few messages with Julian from Altaro. I'm not sure I'm going to use Oops after all...  It's the RAM usage... and a few drawbacks that are really annoying me... I mean 140-180 MB that's continuously taken by an app is certainly annoying.

509

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Zoner Photo Studio Free

« Last post by Armando on October 14, 2010, 03:54 PM »

First step : http://en.wikipedia....son_of_image_viewers

510

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Zoner Photo Studio Free

« Last post by Armando on October 14, 2010, 03:47 PM »

The interface, the settings etc. are very very nice. It's pretty resource friendly too. 
I'd be interesting to compare it point by point, feature for feature to XnView.

511

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Zoner Photo Studio Free

« Last post by Armando on October 14, 2010, 03:42 PM »

My only gripe at this point : zooming. I remember ACDSee's viewer smoothness. I miss that. But maybe there are ways to change that...

[Edit : actually I might be wrong about that smoothness... Take that with a grain of salt... Memory isn't always accurate.]

512

General Software Discussion / Re: Synchronizing a few folders between two machines?

« Last post by Armando on October 14, 2010, 03:39 PM »

I'm very happy about that.    Thanks for dropping by apankrat. I see that VSS is at the center of this release. Nice !!

As I'm currently testing various backup software, and yours is high on my list.

To others : bvckup is super lean (in every aspect) and very efficient if you need to synchronize folders. It includes delta technology... And now VSS. It's user friendly. (Several mentions in this thread).

Am going to test it tomorrow -- have already spent to much time testing stuff today !  

513

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Zoner Photo Studio Free

« Last post by Armando on October 14, 2010, 01:30 PM »

Sorry, reviving an old post.

I just downloaded and installed this. Wow. It's fast.  It's got an amazing feature list also.
I don't know if you tried the same version sajman, but thumbnails generation for a huge amount of pictures is only a bit slower than XnView here. But browsing pictures in the viewer is actually much faster than XnView.

A great freeware IMO.

There's an interesting comparison there

514

General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)

« Last post by Armando on October 13, 2010, 09:46 PM »

Nice stuff 
Thanks for sharing.

515

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by Armando on October 13, 2010, 03:15 PM »

Ah! So you see. Maybe Altaro will do the same. (Still early, but waiting for a response.)

I was such in a good mood last night. Everything was working fine... And then, this morning, I inadvertently erased something in some code (noticed only 30 min. later and couldn't undo it). It would've been 10-15 min. to fix by hand but I thought... "Oh, I've got this new toy! Let's use it..." And BAM! 

516

Find And Run Robot / Re: Letters Instead of Numbers Please!

« Last post by Armando on October 13, 2010, 01:58 PM »

the other problem is that you'd have to hit alt+letter since just hitting letter will add a search item to the search string.  and then that rules out using alt+any letter for other stuff which it is used for now, like bringing up options, right-click menu, etc.

-mouser (October 13, 2010, 09:46 AM)

Couldn't another modifier be used, like <CTRL> ?

Letters could be useful, however, I find that I'm constantly looking at the 10 top results. I continue typing/filtering until I get there. I really wonder if I'd type "t" or "z" if I saw an item down there. Maybe.

Still, I'm sure some users would use it. Howardb being one of them.

517

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by Armando on October 13, 2010, 12:45 PM »

I just posted something in the Altaro Forum. Hopefully I'll get an answer soon.

Hello,

I bought Oops!Backup Yesterday. Things started smoothly... and Oops seems like it could fit the bill but I'm already experiencing a few "problems", unfortunately.

[ I owned a few backup solutions over the years. I've been using SyncBack for many years and it's been extremely reliable, but I wanted something to backup my files frequently without any interventions on my part and preferably using some delta technology. ]

Problems :

1- After doing a first backup, I decided to create a few special folders because I saw that some files didn't need to be backed up that often and were taking a LOT of space (Windows Search index, Archivarius Index, etc.), and others could've been backed up a bit more frequently than I thought (documents, programming projects, code, etc.). To my surprise, Oops created extra folders beside the main one (Main Module), instead of just applying the changes to the folders already backed up (in the main module)... My 500gb hard Drive is now completely full.

Is that how it's supposed to work ? Special folders are getting backed up fully 2 times, once in the main module and an extra one (fully, for the second time) in extra folders as the Main Module folder's siblings?? I thought that special folders would just affect how often and how they would be backed up, nothing else...

Am I missing something ?

Hopefully, I'm missing something as I won't be able to use Oops otherwise. I want all my files in the same folder hierarchy, not in several folders all over the place, and only fully backed up *once*.

2- I proceeded to make my first restore this morning, and I inadvertently erased something very important -- partly because a file didn't get backed up properly because VSS didn't do its job, and partly because I was too stupid to blindly trust the time stamp Oops put on the last backup (9am, but for some files it was truly 10 pm yesterday) -- I unfortunately didn't see that and think that Oops shouldn't put a 9 am stamp on a folder containing a file that wasn't backed up properly since 10 pm the day before (I know that this is what happened as I lost 3 hours of work and I double checked the backed up files, when they were backed up, the time stamp, etc., and it didn't correspond.)

My first reflex was to go check in the recycle bin... But nope, it was definitively gone.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I think that Oops :

a- should offer the option to move the "original" files to recycle bin (or somewhere else) as an extra safety net. It's way to easy to completely adversely modify some files without any way to go back to their lost original state.

b- shouldn't put an erroneous "backed-up" time stamp (I'm talking about the tabs in the restore window) when the version is actually much older than that.

Thanks in advance for any help/information.

(My priority : would really like to have my Hard Drive space back -- i.e. : no files duplication)

518

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by Armando on October 13, 2010, 12:30 PM »

Thanks for the suggestion. I just finished retyping my code.  One hour, and tt's even better than last night. 

I still think that Oops could use the recycle as an option (in small restore cases). SyncBack does that (as an option) when files are deleted during sync operations.

BTW, about SyncbackPro, could you tell us if it now supports multisession on CD/DVD ?  Thanks !

-MerleOne (October 13, 2010, 04:25 AM)

Good question. The answer is, AFAIK : nope.

I know I said that I archived files versions on DVDs but this is really a "Grab the files and burn them" approach...  I wait until  my HD approaches death by suffocation and then I dump everything I can on DVD's. It's usually 2h of work until next time....

519

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by Armando on October 13, 2010, 09:46 AM »

Ok, I just made my first really annoying mistake with oopsbackup. I erased a portion of code in one of my current project, so I thought : ok, I'll use Oops.

So I went into the restore section of the program, clicked on the 9am tab at the left to restore a folder. It restored it, but for some reason (VSS didn'T work) it didn't backup the exact files I needed and so reverted to an older version and I now lost 3h of work, just like that, in a split second. Cool.

So I thought, maybe the guys at Altaro clever enough to put the erased files to the recycle bin. Nope. They were just wrote over.

I admit I've been stupid and I should've been more careful, but it's a really rough first restore experience... 

520

Developer's Corner / Re: Web Debate: Give Us Simplicity So We Can Ignore You

« Last post by Armando on October 13, 2010, 08:47 AM »

It seems to me that the happy medium here would be to provide all the features of a full featureset, but make them ALL able to be turned on or off (maybe only at installation, but still). 

-steeladept (October 10, 2010, 01:26 PM)

I completely agree. Plus Advanced /Simple modes, or something like that. But then, the simple mode must be slick and working for most situations, otherwise it doesn't work and advanced/intermediary becomes the de facto modes. This happens in many applications where "simple mode" becomes "stupid mode".

521

Living Room / Re: I have a very hard announcement to make

« Last post by Armando on October 13, 2010, 08:31 AM »

I am sorry, but when the sight of my IDE makes me cry, it's time to stop.

-app103 (October 12, 2010, 09:52 PM)

Definitely.
I'm sure many of us can relate to that sort of pain.
I left my PhD. Studies 2-3 years ago (age : 34) because I wasn't going anywhere (Darwin knows parts of the story...). Like Renegade I also lost my relationship at the time...

All this also allowed me to see life in a different way, and it had profound and positive results in the end. I'm now working on various new and even more stimulating projects.

This is what I wish for you : that this gap you created will allow new fun events and activities (and even money) to happen... And that you will take the time to feel and make space for what's truly important to you, for what you value most.

Each thing in its own time. 

522

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by Armando on October 12, 2010, 11:41 PM »

So far I like it. No problems whatsoever. A rare thing in computer land.

Now, like I said in a previous post, I just need to know if it'd be possible to somehow archive versions on DVDs (instead of just deleting them). I'd really really doubt so...

Anybody has some element of answer ? Otherwise, I'll directly register to the forum and ask...
(And if nothing is possible, I might do some home brewed versionning with syncback.)

523

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by Armando on October 12, 2010, 12:24 PM »

Thanks Darwin,
Yes this is more like what I'm seeing.
In any case, if oops performs really well and doesn't bother me otherwise, RAM usage shouldn't be too much of a problem. Still it's a lot of RAM to be constantly taken (oops runs all the time in the background).
CPU usage -- a much more important variable in my case -- is minimal though, which is great.

524

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by Armando on October 12, 2010, 10:41 AM »

I spent some time at their forum this morning.

I erased a 200gb folder on my second ext. hard drive, installed Oops!Backup, and my first backup started 5min later. Nice, especially that this is in line with what I've read in reviews, here, etc.

The OopsBackup folder will be compressed (NTFS compression).

Not sure yet how I'll manage the versionning aspect yet. SyncBack allowed me to treat versionning as a completely separated aspect... And I could archive versions on DVDs (instead of just deleting them). Wonder if a similar strategy could be used with Oops!Backup or if I'll need to still use SyncBack to make sure some older file versions are kept, long (years) after being replaced by newer ones... It happened once that a very old file was deleted... Had to dig 2 years back to find it, and it was there, on a DVD !!  (for plain archiving, DVDs are ok. I generally dislike them I must say)

Apart from that, I noticed that RAM usage is on the high side -- a bit too high for my taste, considering that SyncBack would use about 4 MB while resting, and 45 MB while copying big files. It hovers  between 140 (resting) and 175 MB (at work) it seems. Yes, I know that unused RAM is wasted RAM, etc. but still... cleverly used RAM is better than unduly used & wasted RAM. Let's hope that it's the first case here. I'm guessing that there's progress to be made in this area. Will see if that becomes a show stopper or not...

[Edited : made my post more readable]

525

General Software Discussion / Re: Anyone familiar with Oops!Backup?

« Last post by Armando on October 11, 2010, 10:37 PM »

Bought it ! 
Now need to find the time to actually install and configure it... Shouldn't be that long.
(3 licences ? Nice. I could've / should've done that, maybe. Next time.)