Recent Posts

5276

Word Processor Roundup / Re: 3rd Party Tools like Bibliography Addins

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 10:09 PM »

Everyone in my department uses either Endnote or Procite.

5277

General Software Discussion / Re: Making the Switch-04: The "User Guide" as life raft, more n00b problems

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 10:06 PM »

Thanks Edvard, that explanation helped me, a bit, anyway!

5278

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

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 10:06 PM »

I've got Supercopier installed now as well. Haven't had any excuses to test it out yet, but nothing untoward has happened WRT my system so far...

5279

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Maze Craze - Fun 2D game by Wreckedcarzz

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 06:13 PM »

update small spelling errors ans such

Like this one? 

5280

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you a hardcore software fanatic or a poseur?

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 01:43 PM »

I'm h4rd(0r3 [ Invalid Attachment ]

I have to beat the groupies off with a stick!

-Nighted (June 18, 2007, 10:51 AM)

OK nighted - I let this digest for a while... Haven't got a clue what you're talking about!

5281

Official Announcements / Re: DC-IRLDD #2: DonationCoder Real Life Dinner+Drinks, Sat 7/14, Champaign Illinois

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 09:42 AM »

I REALLY regret that I cannot attend... I'll be in Belgium, where I'm trying to organise a mini "European meeting" in July, but hope to get to the next one!

5282

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

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 09:40 AM »

My system is a combo of DirectAccess, TrueLaunchBar and DOpus. DOpus allows me to have the contents of two different folders displayed side by side (so any dual pane file manager will do... as this is a convenience, Windows Explorer will do just fine, actually!) I can then view my various Start Menu and Quick Launch folders and move links around between them and organise them. I'm pretty happy with this method - once you get your folders set up (Internet, Security, Productivity, Disk Management, File Management, etc.) it's pretty easy to drop and drag links to their appropriate folders.

PS I also have VistaStartMenu Pro installed and use it occasionally, too (went on a big kick to free up resources so its autostarting was a casualty along with things like SnagIt and Mophy Accents - DirectAccess abbreviations mean these are only a few taps on the keyboard away, anyway).

5283

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you a hardcore software fanatic or a poseur?

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 09:33 AM »

I have about 35 programs installed.
I have around 15 programs that I use regularly that are standalone no-install apps.

Every time I reboot my computer, it wipes out any new installed programs unless I specifically tell it to save them.  So I test just about every program that is mentioned here on DC, and quite a few others.  Very few are good enough to warrant sticking around.

Carl

-cthorpe (June 17, 2007, 11:49 PM)

When you make an argument like this, it seems the "poseurs" are those with 100's of apps installed. Oh dear!

5284

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you a hardcore software fanatic or a poseur?

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 09:29 AM »

We've got at least 5 Windowses here (Vista too)

Actually, it was ME that I forgot about!  Sorry app!

5285

Living Room / Re: Why is Hotmail so bad at spam?

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 09:28 AM »

I've started seeing cracks in the dyke too - Yahoo used to be BRILLIANT at filtering my e-mail but recently it's been letting some blatantly obviousl spam through - not much - most of it is still landing in my junk mail folder - but enough to make me thing that things are starting to degrade...

5286

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

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 09:10 AM »

Nice, laughingman!

I used to use MrPostman to do something similar in Outlook for both Hotmail (there was about a year during which my pop3 access was disabled and then it mysteriously reappeared) and Yahoo, but it stopped working for Yahoo and I've never been able to get it to work again. Once Hotmail started letting me access my mail via Outlook without using a thirdparty app, I dumped it. Development of MrPostman seems to be moribund (last update was 18 months ago). There are a range of both free and paid apps that will do this...

PS Although most people (from reading the Sourceforge forum for MrPostman) seem to be able to use MrPostman to retrieve their Yahoo mail in Outlook, I simply can't using three different machines (and thus installations) and two different Yahoo accounts. Of course, I gave up about a year ago... maybe I should try again!

5287

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

« Last post by Darwin on June 18, 2007, 09:04 AM »

Just an update: I'll be in Cambridge July 13 through 15 (just confirmed my flight - with taxes and an unheralded €6 fee for using a credit card on the net this cost me €26  The flight from my hometown to Vancouver - 20 minute flight - costs about €236!).

5288

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 11:36 PM »

OK - here's 1251... (who says I'm easy?)

5289

General Software Discussion / Are you a hardcore software fanatic or a poseur?

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 11:33 PM »

I've recently did a spring cleaning of sorts and uninstalled 46 programs from my computer (installed 7 since then though  ). This got me wondering, we've close to 74,000 members on the donationcoder site and I'd like to get a sense of what is normal amongst us in terms of the number of programs that we have installed. I realise that this is a bit problematic as we've probably every flavour or Linux represent as well as at least 4 flavours of Windows (98 through XP) and various iterations of Mac's OS as well... Don't care - just want some numbers.

Thanks for your votes!

PS I'm hoping that the results of this poll will help us to define what makes one a software fanatic or a poseur 

5290

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

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 07:58 PM »

Well... I still have 50 GMail invites (that work, though I didn't think you needed them anymore?!) - if you want to see what the fuss is about, just PM me!

5291

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

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 07:56 PM »

No worries gjehle, I left making a general announcement kind of late - mea culpa. I'll hold you to the next, though (probably be July 2008 though...).

Good luck with those exams!

5292

General Software Discussion / Re: What do you think of PCTools' Spyware Doctor?

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 02:25 PM »

OK - I'm downloading it now, Carol - thanks for the update and the link.

5293

General Software Discussion / Re: What do you think of PCTools' Spyware Doctor?

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 01:28 PM »

Thanks Carol - that's the one!

Nosh - I've no clear idea why, although it's been discussed in a number of threads on donationcoder over the last 18 months. I've never used it, so can't compare/comment.

5294

Word Processor Roundup / Re: Biased

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 11:03 AM »

Excellent, George! I had been trying to think how to make exactly the point that you've made - personal bias is always part of any review - impossible for any review to be entirely objective - and I think Zaine is very up front about stating his biases. One does not have to agree with him, and clearly not everyone does, but that doesn't invalidate the review. Josh and wasker's criticisms here are valid, but if Zaine had written with a different bias a different set of people would have been criticizing him for those biases as well. Unavoidable.

5295

Living Room / Re: She Is A Lady

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 10:57 AM »

 

That's quite frightening, Curt! Nice to see that no one got hurt - I almost wonder if it was staged as it is alarming how little it took to turn the car over!

5296

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

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 10:49 AM »

Hi all,

I leave for Belgium on Thursday the 21 June. I'll be near the city of Namur for most of July (through the 26) and wonder if anyone would like to get together at some point on a weekend either in Namur or at a location nearby that is more convenient for everyone? I should have posted this earlier but  haven't been organised enough to type this post out until now!

Any takers? We could meet up for drinks and perhaps a meal?

Respond in this thread or off-line and we'll try to sort something out.

Mike

PS I'm also going to be in the UK for at least two or three days (haven't picked the dates yet, so they're open) - anyone in or near Cambridge that would like to get together as well? I was thinking of the Orchard in Grantchester, but again, have left this far too late to organise, so I understand if this doesn't work for anyone...

5297

General Software Discussion / Re: Combining partitions

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 10:42 AM »

Even if the partition manager is smart enought to modify them, you still wind up with artifacts, which is really, REALLY annoying! I had this problem a few months ago and it took a few weeks/month or so to sort out. It was little things - I had moved a bunch of data files that are normally located in the programs' folder under program files under the root directory to a different partition (makes backups and re-installs of windows easier to recover from) and these links were not changed. So, my Outlook pst file wouldn't open because Outlook was still looking on drive F:, which no longer existed (I combined E: and F: and wound up with a bigger E: partition).

5298

General Software Discussion / Re: RegexBuddy 3 released

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 10:38 AM »

I was surprised about the bought-on-June-12 rule on the webpage, because i ordered RegexBuddy 2 at 2007-05-27 and they offered me an update to v3 for free.  Thanks Jan, Ji-haa

-OGroeger (June 17, 2007, 03:49 AM)

This is more or less what I expected to happen! Excellent news 

5299

General Software Discussion / Re: What do you think of PCTools' Spyware Doctor?

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 10:37 AM »

Curt - you need to download and install somethig like tzuk's Sandboxie, which creates a space on your harddrive that it controls. Instead of changes being made to your "real" OS installation and registry, changes are made in a virtual model of it contained within the sandbox. None of the changes can affect anything outiside of the sandbox. What's great is that you can also use sandboxie to install and test software if you're at all worried about the software messing your settings up. When you're done surfing, or testing software, you just delete the contents of the sandbox and everything is gone.

There's an alternative that works in a very similar way and which a lot of people here prefer but for the life of me I can't remember what it's called (AVS something or other!) - someone will no doubt be along shortly to tell you about it.

5300

Older Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for June 15th, 2007 - Codename "Heat Wave"

« Last post by Darwin on June 17, 2007, 10:29 AM »

Welcome to donationcoder johnnyfive!