Recent Posts

5001

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Replacement Power Options applet

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 18, 2007, 03:29 AM »

Sounds like progress - but I don't pretend I have followed the argument 

5002

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 12, 2007, 03:54 PM »

Welcome Pyr8, whereabouts in the UK - there are a few of us about

5003

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 12, 2007, 02:43 PM »

Abterix/Stefan mentioned that he lived in Heidelberg in an earlier message beacuse that is what I responded to. Presumably I mentioned "Yorkshire Dales" in my initial post that started the thread.

Given that messages after 17-03-2005 exist in the thread I presume any backup soon after that date will have the original posts in them (they were certainly there when I posted my comment on 31-08-2005.

5004

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Replacement Power Options applet

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 12, 2007, 12:09 PM »

I still get large negative usage values (eg. -80% even when CPU usage is under 10%)

5005

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 12, 2007, 10:16 AM »

Hi... I *swear* that I posted in this thread long ago but can find no evidence to support this so...

-Darwin (January 11, 2007, 12:17 PM)

That's because the start of the thread has been lost somehow - I started the thread not long after I joined the site but for some reason .....

If you look at my first post in this thread now here you can see I am referring back to the posting of another member earlier in the thread - all those early posts have disappeared.

Mouser do you keep any old backups or are they discarded on a rolling basis ? If you kept some ealy ones we may be able to resurrect the full thread ...

5006

Best Music Service / Re: tech crunch article comparing music services

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 10, 2007, 07:00 PM »

I have subscribed to eMusic which is a legitmate company. All of their music is in non-DRM MP3 format but having said that it is only good if you don't want the big names. There is quite a lot of music I like though - not least folk and country type stuff and a pretty good collection of classical music (including the London Symphony Orchestra's LSO label).

It works on a fixed monthly subscription and you get a set number of tracks which you can download but you can buy more tracks if you like at any time. See http://www.emusic.com/ for details (they also do a free trial offer where you can download a number of tracks for free - you do have to sign up but you can cancel any time during the free period).

Personally I have gone off DRMed music completely. I have a few WMA DRMed albums and it is a real pain in WMP 11 as it constantly connects to stores to revalidate you DRMed licences.

Personally I can't see the point - I can burn and rip then import the albums again in MP3 format so what does DRM actually achieve? Same goes for iTunes and Audible - both let you burn to standard CDs which can then be ripped as non-DRM so what is DRM actually achieving apart from inconvenience for legitimate purchasers??

By the way if I burn WMA files to CD and then rip them back to WMA format at the same bit rate (with the same software) will I get identical files to those I started with except without the DRM or will degradation still occur?? It would be nice to think that the decode to CD - reencode to WMA procedure would produce a transparent conversion without introducing noise.

5007

General Software Discussion / WARNING - Fake Ashampoo Winoptimiser has been posted ...

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

Just received the following warning email from Ashampoo ...

*******************************************************************

ATTENTION: Illegal Ashampoo® WinOptimizer 4 version in the Internet

*******************************************************************

the Ashampoo WinOptimizer 4 just appeared on several major download
sites like www.download.com and www.cnet.com as an illegal fake
version with wrong product number and version number. The official
Ashampoo WinOptimizer 4 will be released on January 17th, 2007.

Click here for more information:
http://r.ashampoo.co...ings/1/151206_en.htm


Besides this if you are generally in doubt about correct
Ashampoo versions please check our product overview at
http://www.ashampoo.co.uk/products and the specific product pages
for the right version number and official release date to stop
- with your help - criminal machinations.

Thank you!

With kind regards,
Rolf Hilchner
CEO & President

==================================================================

Wenn Sie diesen Newsletter
nicht mehr empfangen möchten, klicken Sie bitte auf diesen Link:
http://www.ashampoo....nternet/myashampoo/d

Ashampoo® gibt Ihre E-Mail auf keinen Fall an andere Firmen weiter.

Copyright © 1999-2007, ashampoo GmbH & Co. KG. All Rights Reserved.
ashampoo GmbH & Co. KG, Felix-Wankel-Str. 16, 26125 Oldenburg
[email protected]

5008

Living Room / Re: Insane DIY water cooling

« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 06, 2007, 11:16 AM »

If like me you are impatient there are a load of pictures on this page of the final build ...

http://forums.bit-te...mp;page=11&pp=20

awesome project.

Got me thinking though - could you incorporate tropical fish in the system and turn the whol project into a tropical fish tank with add-on CPU ?

5009

General Software Discussion / Re: Good Freeware Video Editor?

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

My 2p is that in the world of video editing you get what you pay for (if ease of use and quality of output is important).

If you just want something to edit out ads in recorded programs TMPGEnc is useful - but there aren't any obvious candidates for full blown video editing for free. ULEAD and Pinnacle so some reasonably cheap consumer level packages that are reasonable.

If you can splash out a little cash you may want to consider Adobe Premier Elements and Sony Vegas MovieStudio. Both are around the $100 mark but would make life much simpler and efficient.

I haven't used Premier since the Pro version 6 of the full package (I got a copy for free with some hardware but never really got on with it even though I have a number of Adobe related packages) and I much prefer Sony's Vegas software but I would guess that is a personal preference. Both also include DVD authoring software.

For Vegas see http://www.sonymedia...ucts/vegasfamily.asp

For Premier Elements see http://www.adobe.com...remiereel/index.html

5010

Living Room / Re: What is the DonationCoder.com Internet Citizens's Club (Cody's Club) ??

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 30, 2006, 06:33 PM »

Stay tuned to find out on January 1st! 

-mouser (December 22, 2006, 04:58 AM)

So long as you don't use the spelling 'KLUB' and then go for an acronym !!

5011

Official Announcements / Re: Anyone feel like doing some semi-regular original blogging at donationcoder?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 29, 2006, 07:55 PM »

none of the original column/blog people coming out of the woodwork?

it would be nice to see Carol carrying on from her abrupt cancellation...

-nudone (December 29, 2006, 01:34 PM)

Me BLOG ? Last time I did that on DC the whole thing collapsed inwardly and Mouser scurried off into a hole ...

5012

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of Fineprint (Virtual Printer)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 29, 2006, 06:26 PM »

My Canon ip5000 has a cartidge tray feed but it also also a straight through feed - it is great to have the choice. Plus it includes automatic duplex, automatic 4-up booklet printing (which is really neat), mulitple page reduction to a single sheet and CD/DVD printing and produces really great photos.

-Carol Haynes (December 16, 2006, 05:35 AM)

Doesn't the fact that those features are built into hardware render FinePrint rather pointless?

-rjbull (December 29, 2006, 02:44 PM)

Not totally as it has other functions - like inserting pages into booklet prints, removing images, other forms of scaling and others.

Actually I bought ClickBook but have been rather frustrated that it doesn't work well with my printer (see note above). It insists that paper is inserted via the sheet feeder and I can't get it to use the cassette at all. I email their support who wrote back with a suggestion to solve the problem but it didn't work and I got no further response when I replied to that effect. There is obviously a bug somewhere in there but they don't seem keen to troubleshoot it!

5013

General Software Discussion / Re: "Word" liscence query

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 29, 2006, 11:15 AM »

I you only use WP occasionally why not just use WordPad ? It does most things needed for quickly typing a letter etc. and it is on your computer anyway.

5014

General Software Discussion / Re: Why piracy is the better choice

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 28, 2006, 07:43 PM »

I know several persons that bought an XBOX just for halo.)

-f0dder (December 28, 2006, 04:14 PM)

More fool them - I still think the big game companies will expect software to run on more than VISTA - they're still releasing stuff that is compatible with Windows 98 because they know there is still a sizeable market out there!

5015

General Software Discussion / Re: Why piracy is the better choice

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 28, 2006, 04:11 PM »

like i said, i don't really know. but i would assume that directx 10 would be made available for xp or are microsoft going to deliberately keep it to vista.

-nudone (December 28, 2006, 11:23 AM)

At the moment they are saying it will not be available for XP

-Eóin (December 28, 2006, 11:53 AM)

In which case the games manufacturers won't develop for it. If you spend huge amounts of money on development you want a return on that investment - limiting distribution only to VISTA in the short term is unlikely to do that.

Personally I think MS will come under increasing pressure to release DX 10 for XP - though they may never admit it.

5016

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Replacement Power Options applet

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 27, 2006, 04:33 AM »

That sounds quite likely.

How do you launch a program with affinity restriction (I know how to change it once it is launched).

5017

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Replacement Power Options applet

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 26, 2006, 05:02 PM »

Strange - with <10% CPU activity LowToSleep is still reporting negative CPU activity (of the order of -80%) ???

5018

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Acronis True Image for FREE

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 25, 2006, 01:15 PM »

It was always Norton Ghost (as far as I can remember) but when Symantec acquired Powerquest they started to screw around with the app and basically moved the code over to PQ Drive Image.

Unfortunately in the process they lost both markets - rather like Partition Magic !

There are loads of different imaging solutions that work great and I would definitely recommend most of them before Ghost these days. Acronis works fine.

5019

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft Office Upgrade (from 2002 to 2003)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 24, 2006, 05:52 PM »

How will you legally upgrade without a copy of Office 2003? It is a new version and you need a new license. There are upgrade versions available. If you need Access and/or Publisher you will need one of those - if not see below. Frontpage and OneNote are standalone apps for most versions of 2003 (unlike O2002).

If you run the installer of a commercial copy of Office 2003 it will automatically upgrade earlier versions of Office and retain most of your customisations and any internal data (such as emails).

The cheapest way to upgrade is probably the "Student and Teacher Edition" which you can legally install on up to 3 computers. In theory you can only use it if you work in a school, are a student or a parent of a student but the pack is supplied in full via many normal retailers (such as Amazon) and doesn't require proof of status. It is effectively a Home version (but all the apps are complete) - but MS didn't want to call it that!

Actually it is a good time to grab Office 2003 as there are some good clearance bargains knocking about with the 2007 version due out anytime soon and also the student version of 2007 won't include Outlook which is a real shame and in my opinion will just push the home market even more towards open source solutions.

5020

Living Room / Re: Merry x-mas 2006

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 24, 2006, 09:51 AM »

Happy Christmas one and all! Let's hope DC, Mouser and you and yours go from strength to strength in 2007 

(and RIP my Creative ZenMicro - it developed an intermittent connection problem on the earphone socket and so I thought I would fix it - if you have one of these gizmos don't try and take it apart it is impossible to put it back together again without destroying very tiny and delicate surface connector pin sets!).

5021

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of Fineprint (Virtual Printer)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 23, 2006, 02:21 PM »

Anyone got any ideas on how to force ClickBook to use the correct paper source on Canon printers? Mine has a tray and sheet feed and ClickBook insists on using the sheet feed which I never use as it usually has piles of junk piled on it.

I emailed ClickBook tech support and they suggested using the File > Print to output printout as I can then choose the paper source but even if I choose the paper tray it still ignores the setting and goes for the sheet feeder.

Really annoying!

5022

Living Room / Re: Building a Quiet PC

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 22, 2006, 05:05 AM »

This is a brilliant short story which seems to be relevant here ...

http://www.amazon.co...orster/dp/1419171119

it is about a civilization where the ever present machine noise stops hen the system breaks down. People die from the silence ...

5023

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review of Fineprint (Virtual Printer)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 20, 2006, 06:52 PM »

Does ClickBook offer Page Scaling like FinePrint - that is something I could do with as Firefox and Internet Explorer don't really fully solve this problem for web pages?

5024

Living Room / Re: adding SATA to a non-SATA motherboard

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 20, 2006, 05:42 PM »

If it is an internal drive is it realistically going to be hot swappable anyway?

There are loads of PATA > SATA and SATA > PATA converters out there usually in the form of a small PCB that fits between the mobo/PCI connector and the drive connector. Some will even let you use ATAPI CD/DVD drives on a SATA interface! They aren't cheap though - it is probably nearly as cheap to buy a new drive in the format you want.

If you just want more disc space why not upgrade an existing drive - there are huge ATA drives out there now that are really cheap - alternatively use a USB 2 external drive (I have a Seagate 400Gb which is really excellent - and hot swapable).

5025

Living Room / Re: adding SATA to a non-SATA motherboard

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 20, 2006, 11:07 AM »

I got a WD SATA II drive and it had both power connectors (the molex was labelled 'legacy'). I haven't tried the molex connector but I assume it works. Otherwise you should be able to get adapter/splitter cables. Here is an example:

http://www.overclock...php?prodid=CB-052-GE

This was the drive I installed:

http://www.overclock...php?prodid=HD-070-WD