Recent Posts

5251

General Software Discussion / Is the Windows start menu dead?

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 09:22 AM »

Tinjaw's thread about an organized start menu prompted justice to ask if organizing your start menu is really that important given that even Microsoft seems to have abandoned it. I thought it would be interesting to start a thread to get users' opinions about whether or not the start menu has a future. If you think it does, how do you see it evolving? If you think it doesn't, what alternatives do you envision for it, or do you already use an alternative?

5252

General Review Discussion / Re: Best spreadsheet

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 09:12 AM »

Niefer - go to the General Discussion forum and click on the "Post New Poll" link at the right of the top of the forum index (see screen cap below!) - it's very easy from there.

5253

Living Room / Re: DC get together in Western Europe?! July 2007?

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 09:03 AM »

Cool! I'm hoping that over the next week or two a few others will notice this thread and be able to join us.

5254

General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 09:02 AM »

Yes - I've loaded FastCopy onto a thumbdrive - very nice 

5255

General Software Discussion / Re: Is an Organized Efficient Start Menu the Holy Grail of Daily Computing?

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 09:00 AM »

Heh, heh, my suggstion about scanning the Program Files folder for exe names wasn't really serious! However, I like AK's suggestions as it is actually a feasible, user driven solution that would actually work. Nice 

PS Justice raises a good point, though - is the start menu dead! Hmm... sounds like the title for a new thread!

5256

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

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 08:56 AM »

p3lb0x - welcome to Donationcoder!

5257

Living Room / Re: DC get together in Western Europe?! July 2007?

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 02:10 AM »

OK Gothic - I *should* have open access to the internet while I'm on site - we can try to arrange this once I've got "the lay of the land" - midnight on the Citadel in Namur has a nice ring to it, but it's a bit hackneyed!

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General Software Discussion / Re: teracopy: copy your files faster

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 01:55 AM »

Yup, SuperCopier seems very stable and I, too, am impressed by its unobtrusiveness (is that a word?) - until I read lanux' note above, I wasn't even aware/had forgotten that it runs in my systray. Nice.

5259

General Software Discussion / Re: "XPLinux" Running Windows XP and Kubuntu on one joint desktop

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 01:51 AM »

Holy crap! This looks interesting - best of both worlds. I had to check the calendar to make double sure that it's not April 1st! Anway, will need time to read more carefully the OP and think about possibly implementing this on my own machine - COOL (but, is it necessary...).

PS Have Windowblinds 5.5 as well but don't have it insalled at the moment - I wax and wane on whether or not I need the eye candy when balanced against the impact on my system. However, the last time I had it installed I was running A LOT of resource hungry apps from startup - am not doing that anymore, perhaps it's time to give WB another whirl (it's been three or four months, so I'm "due").

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General Software Discussion / Re: Is an Organized Efficient Start Menu the Holy Grail of Daily Computing?

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 01:45 AM »

I guess an alternative would be some sort of programme that is able to scan the Program Files folder (and subfolders) and recognise and organise the Start Menu based on the name of the exe files it identifies. However, what would it do with the GIMP?! Most software are cursed with names that have little or no immediately obvious connection to their function. Back to the drawing board. Also, you'd need user input to set up variables - some people might like separate categories for vector and bitmap graphics or for web browsers and e-mail clients where other users might be content with a single folder for Graphics and one for Internet...

5261

General Software Discussion / Re: List of Vector Illustration Alternatives

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 01:37 AM »

I actually have DrawPlus 8 (got it for $19.95 during one of Serif's promotions and couldn't resist) though I've never used it and have uninstalled it for now. I leave for Belgium in about 36 hours so probably won't have time to play with it, but I'll install it and see if I can put it through its paces while I'm in Belgium (if the beer flows as freely as I have been told at the site, this might not happen!).

5262

Living Room / Re: Latest Apple Mac vs PC Commercial: PCs suck because of all the software choices

« Last post by Darwin on June 20, 2007, 01:32 AM »

Nice Langa quote, LaughingLizard. Like you, I find that he very succinctly expresses my feelings about Apple/Mac as well, in a way that I lack the eloquence to do myself!

5263

Living Room / Re: What's the most complicated wristwatch?

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 06:33 PM »

Crap, Aram, you're making me feel OLD. I was *supposed* to graduate from university the year your grade 8 graduation watch was made and did so the year you were in grade 10 (took three years off after my first year to figure out what I wanted to do - ie party a lot and figure out that I didn't want to work in a grocery store stocking shelves for the rest of my life, but I digress)...

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Living Room / Re: What's the most complicated wristwatch?

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 05:56 PM »

figure that solar power will actually be a bad thing for me.  Is that true?  Are there really no batteries in the watch at all?  I'd also like to have that atomic timekeeping.

Just give the watch a light bath under a lamp (or in a window) for a few hours before you go to bed once a week or so and all will be well. The solar panel behind the face charges a battery inside the watch, so these watches do indeed have batteries. You can definitely get solar powered watches that will sync with an atomic  clock.

Here's my (now 8 year old) titanium Citizen Eco-star - note how "new" it looks despite being a daily wearer for so long:



Yes, that's MY wrist!

5265

General Software Discussion / Re: Making the Switch-03: First impressions and first problems after installation

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 03:26 PM »

Thanks for the link re: automatix, tournics - I'll take a look. *Fortunately* I haven't had much time to play in ubuntu lately, so haven't used automatix to install anything!

5266

Best Text Editor / Re: Innaccurate review of notepad++

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 03:18 PM »

Welcome to the site jp2007! The review is more likely to be out of date as it was written over two years ago, now. Hope to see more of you around Cody-land 

5267

Living Room / Re: What's the most complicated wristwatch?

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 01:31 PM »

Please, I beg you, don't do this to me, Aram! I'm a recovering wristwatch (and pocketwatch) addict! My grandfathers Burlington Railroad Pocketwatch is on my desk before me and a titanium Citizen Eco-Drive is on my wrist as I write this. In a dresser drawer I have about 60 other watches (nothing in the same leagues as a Vacheron et Constantin, but Rolexes, Longines, Omegas, Hamiltons, Girard-Perregaux, etc.). I'm actually just revisiting an obsession over my Hamilton 992 Crown set pocekt watch in display case - it's GORGEOUS (but sadly won't run for more than a few hours - needs a cleaning).





Yeah, I know, I'll never win any awards for my photography!

5268

Living Room / Re: Thank you for this site and the people here.

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 12:29 PM »

Ah, Jeff, I am so sorry to hear of your loss. Thank you for sharing this with us and I hope that you are able to derive some comfort by continuing to this forum.

If there is anything that I can do, please do let me know via PM.

5269

General Software Discussion / Re: More about e-mail web based and other

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 09:12 AM »

Hmmm... interesting couple of posts Carol. I haven't tried to access Yahoo via pop3 "natively" in ages, maybe I'll give it a look again.

As for the new interface, I still have an active Yahoo Plus account so only use the new interface to access my mail away from my main computer and to review and remove the contents of the SPAM folder (always a good idea as occasionally I find bona fide e-mail - usually with licence code! in it). I've already decided not to renew the Yahoo Plus membership, which runs out next month, and hope that you're right (SpamBayes does an outstanding job of filtering my mail, so I don't care about SPAM from Yahoo).

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Living Room / Re: Is it me, or is the internet getting S L O W E R ?

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 09:08 AM »

I think your guys imaginations are just getting bigger

-mitzevo (June 19, 2007, 12:45 AM)

Nah... the tinfoil hat looks cool! Really! AND, it protects me from attempts to read and to control my mind!

5271

General Software Discussion / Re: Collectorz.com

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 09:06 AM »

As Carl points out, changing the wording of a review exposes you to the suspicion of having edited other reviews and comments so that they put collectorz.com in a better light. This is not an accusation but rather pointing out the potential for misinterpretation. As I suggested, merely indicating via an editorial comment that a feature or policy mentioned in the review is no longer available achieves exactly what you want while avoiding any possible criticism or suggestion that any license has been taken with your users' comments. This is not only more open but also allows you to post older comments about your products that mention the lifetime licensing (rather than removing them altogether).

So, this comment and my previous one, takes the form of a suggestion - not an accusation of anything underhanded having been done. I hope you now understand what sort of suspicions this can raise and see that there is at least one alternative that aviods raising those suspicions.

5272

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 09:04 AM »

Interesting find NoD5 - I'll check it out, thanks!

5273

General Software Discussion / Re: Is an Organized Efficient Start Menu the Holy Grail of Daily Computing?

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 09:01 AM »

Tagging is a nice idea - it could hook into the TidyStartMenu, which I have licence for and find myself using less often (because I am less likely to use the start menu these days). Problem is, the end user still has to do all the tagging to make this system work... Unless, of course, developers can agree upon, and implement, some sort of tagging standard. Still a nice idea, though 

5274

General Software Discussion / Re: RegexBuddy 3 released

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 08:56 AM »

Thanks JoTo - further evidence that all is well in jgsoft land! Having bought 3 licences from Jan, one would hope that I already knew this  ; I just got a bit freaked out about the June 12/June 13 break and it got me thinking about my recent purchase of EditPad Pro. Sounds like a new version being released tomorrow isn't going to put a dent in my bank account (if a new version came out in the fall it probably would, but I can live with that).

5275

General Software Discussion / Re: RegexBuddy 3 released

« Last post by Darwin on June 19, 2007, 12:26 AM »

ftw = ? Sorry, I can't figure it out