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551

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MS Office 2013 US$9.95 Corporate/Enterprise Home Use Program - Mini-Review

« Last post by dr_andus on March 16, 2014, 07:40 AM »

This seems to be hearsay - or at least a speculative FUD theory. Repeated searches on this seem unable to throw up any actual evidence to suggest definite proof that it defines the causal problem. For example - as mentioned above - how come I can't replicate the problem on my laptop, yet the problem exists on @dr_andus' i7 laptop/PC with a similar (but newer) configuration to mine?

-IainB (March 15, 2014, 07:57 AM)

But that's exactly the point. The problem occurs on some people's systems and not on others. And as for why people speculate about the causes... what other choice do they have if MS, the creator of the software and an organisation with huge resources, is unable to or unwilling to offer an explanation and a solution?

And it looks like people are having this problem not only with MS Word 2013 on Win7 but also with Win8 in general: Poor font rendering in Windows 8 (blurry text)

Tzon asked on  February 24, 2013

Poor font rendering in Windows 8 (blurry text)

Apparently there is a huge problem with font rendering in Windows 8. Text appears very blurry. Programs affected by the new rendering are: Internet Explorer 10, the modern interface (start screen), Office 2013 and other 3rd party applications that rely on this rendering technology. There is no way to fix this problem, unless Microsoft recognizes it.

552

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: Blank full-screen background, solid movable circle replacing cursor

« Last post by dr_andus on March 15, 2014, 05:21 AM »

Not exactly what you're asking, but Clearly (with Firefox and Chrome add-ons) helps you manipulate the background and text size of web pages, and Line Reader provides a line by the cursor to lead the eye.

553

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MS Office 2013 US$9.95 Corporate/Enterprise Home Use Program - Mini-Review

« Last post by dr_andus on March 14, 2014, 08:34 AM »

So it sounds like one should be wary of updating to IE10/11 as well...

-tomos (March 14, 2014, 08:19 AM)

Actually I'm not having the same problem with IE11 in terms of font blurriness, though at times some fonts do get rendered in more ugly form than on FF, but it's just an aesthetic problem. My biggest gripe about IE10/11 vs. IE9 was that the Outlook web interface got deprecated, e.g. it's no longer possible to sort emails by the name of a particular sender, it just sorts all senders in A-Z and then you need to navigate through pages to get to the right letter (unless I'm missing something).

554

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MS Office 2013 US$9.95 Corporate/Enterprise Home Use Program - Mini-Review

« Last post by dr_andus on March 14, 2014, 08:28 AM »

...but I'd rather stick with Office 2010 than switch full Aero back on.
_____________________

-dr_andus (March 13, 2014, 09:26 AM)

Why?   

-IainB (March 14, 2014, 05:55 AM)

Because, as I've discovered after switching it off, my 3-yr old PC is way faster and more stable without Aero. I didn't realise what a drain on resources it was.

555

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MS Office 2013 US$9.95 Corporate/Enterprise Home Use Program - Mini-Review

« Last post by dr_andus on March 13, 2014, 09:26 AM »

So far, I have been unable to reproduce the problem(s) as described by yourself and others with v2013.
The question I have is thus "How come?"

-IainB (March 13, 2014, 07:52 AM)

My system looks very similar to yours (MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1, Intel Core i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80GHz, 8.0GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series, Adapter RAM 1.00 GB, Acer PC), so I'm also wondering why this is occurring on some systems and not others. I presume that if this had been affecting the majority, then MS would have done something about it by now.

The only thing I can think of is that I have Aero and all other fancy enhancements switched off. I'm just using a plain vanilla Windows Classic theme. I guess I could poke around in those settings, but I'd rather stick with Office 2010 than switch full Aero back on.

556

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MS Office 2013 US$9.95 Corporate/Enterprise Home Use Program - Mini-Review

« Last post by dr_andus on March 13, 2014, 05:23 AM »

Thanks, I did try that. Elsewhere it's been suggested that there is no solution to this yet.

I'm on Win7 64-bit, and I installed the 32-bit version of MS Office 2013.

RolandOH replied on

The cause for Office, Modern UI and IE10 to look so bad is that they use a new graphics rendering API offered in Windows 8 (and with updates on Windows 7, too).
The new font rendering engine offered by this new API simply doesn't have Clear Type implemented. So unless Microsoft patches this new API to support Clear Type, no program using this API will ever be able to do so.
The reason why Firefox (and Chrome, to an extend) are able to use Clear Type is because they still rely on the old Windows font-rendering API.

This is a bad decision by Microsoft, but their reasoning behind that (from what i think) is also quite clear: It is based on the assumption that their future will be in the tablet market. Since ClearType only works in one direction (horizontally, that is), it is totally useless if you rotate the tablet. The other thing is animation: if you animate a Clear Type anti-aliased font, its boundaries will start to flicker. And since Modern UI is a lot about animations and transitions, this would offer a bad experience.

Last thing is the much higher ppi (pixels per inch) offered by tablet screens (>200ppi) in respect to computer monitors (mostly <=120ppi), where grayscale-anti aliasing is totally sufficient for crisp fonts.
And the worst thing: the Surface has a display with only 148ppi! So fonts look crappy on their reference design tablet.

The bad thing is: no one can help you with the font rendering problem. You're on your own, as a consumer. For me that meant to downgrade back to Office 2010, ignoring Modern UI and all apps completely and ditching IE 10 (but hey, that's a no-brainer, isn't it?).

557

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MS Office 2013 US$9.95 Corporate/Enterprise Home Use Program - Mini-Review

« Last post by dr_andus on March 12, 2014, 04:18 PM »

Anyway, now that I do qualify, I'm still wondering about the value of upgrading from MS Office 2010 Pro to 2013 Pro.

-dr_andus (January 19, 2014, 03:58 PM)

Well, the value of getting the latest and greatest versions of Microsoft's flagship suite for $9.95 should count for something!

-Innuendo (January 19, 2014, 05:23 PM)

Finally I got around to installing it today. It was painless enough. I've only tried out Word 2013 so far, but the first experience was disappointing vis-a-vis Word 2010. I must be one of the unlucky ones, but I ran into the infamous font rendering problem. It just looks awful, all pixelated and washed out. Apparently this is a side-effect of making the OS tablet-friendly.

I tried the solutions suggested by Microsoft, but none of them worked. So I'm back to Word 2010 for now, until there is some kind of a fix for this.

558

General Software Discussion / Re: ad hoc network setup, Microsoft home, Teamview, dedicated VPN ?

« Last post by dr_andus on March 11, 2014, 04:57 PM »

My gut feeling is to run with Teamviewer, expanding usage, maybe going paid.

-Steven Avery (March 11, 2014, 03:12 PM)

Have you tried Chrome Remote Desktop? It's been a year that I'd last used the free Teamviewer, so I don't know how it has evolved since then, but I found CRD a lot better (higher quality transmission, easier to start a session, complete control over remote computer etc.).

559

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 11 Released!

« Last post by dr_andus on March 06, 2014, 12:24 PM »

Without that, there's a couple of other benefits that appeal to me (a semi-casual user):

File Display Toolbars
Streamlined Copy Progress Display - might make it so I don't have to use teracopy, I have to try it.
Breadcrumbs, Status Bar, and FAYT changes - these address some of my major complaints.  Especially the FAYT part, as I had to use wildcards before.
Folder Tree Changes - especially remembering the root branches.  Another major complaint of mine.
File and Folder Labels Improvements - Auto filters on folders?  That's just plain cool.

-wraith808 (March 06, 2014, 08:21 AM)

Thanks for breaking that down, that's was helpful for getting my head around the new features.

560

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 11 Released!

« Last post by dr_andus on March 06, 2014, 05:40 AM »

I'm just genuinely trying to make an economic calculation for myself, and I haven't been able to find sufficient articulation of the benefits to be able to make that calculation. BTW, I own two v. 10 PRO licenses at the moment and using Dopus on 3 machines (2 PCs, 1 netbook).

-dr_andus (March 06, 2014, 04:41 AM)

I'm just going to leave this link here: What's new

-myarmor (March 06, 2014, 04:54 AM)

Yes, but those are features, not benefits. It's a traditional marketing pitfall to present the customer with features but not explain the benefits of those features, which is what I'd need to understand better to make the purchase decision. I was just hoping maybe someone here who understands the product more can articulate those a bit further.

561

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 11 Released!

« Last post by dr_andus on March 06, 2014, 04:41 AM »

As for the features added, it's true that there are no 'killer' features added, but I think it's a lot of nice additions that improve the experience as a whole.

-Innuendo (March 05, 2014, 08:05 PM)

Well, maybe not 'killer' features, but I really appreciate that now you can use jscript/vbscript/whatever for more than
renaming (without "abusing" rename scripting). It also exposes many parts to those hosts (which it didn't in earlier versions).

The file display bar was also nice. No need for a border + location bar, now they're the same, and can be customized just like any toolbar.

-myarmor (March 06, 2014, 12:22 AM)

Maybe one thing for the developers to take away from this discussion is that the benefits of this upgrade may not have been sufficiently articulated for the different types of users out there. I have looked at the new features a few times but the way they have been presented made it difficult for me to evaluate the economic value and utility of this upgrade.

E.g., if there are no "killer features," or at least some major new improvements, what justifies this as v. 11, rather than just v. 10 point something, for the different types of users (segments that Dopus serves)? If I was into scripting, maybe I'd get excited, but since I don't know how to do that, what else justifies the upgrade? What specifically makes the "nice additions" worth AUD50?

I'm just genuinely trying to make an economic calculation for myself, and I haven't been able to find sufficient articulation of the benefits to be able to make that calculation. BTW, I own two v. 10 PRO licenses at the moment and using Dopus on 3 machines (2 PCs, 1 netbook).

562

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 11 Released!

« Last post by dr_andus on March 05, 2014, 03:53 PM »

I'm in 2 minds about this upgrade. It's hard to see what killer improvement is there, especially when it costs AUS$50 for the upgrade.

-katykaty (March 05, 2014, 01:21 PM)

I was wondering about the same thing. I'm having a hard time finding the killer feature for me. I consider myself a basic user of Dopus (I don't even customise it myself, just use Andy's setup), but the new features seem to be targeting the super-sophisticated user that can write their own scripts and customise the hell out of the interface.

563

N.A.N.Y. 2014 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2014 Release: Text Inspection & Manipulation Utility

« Last post by dr_andus on March 05, 2014, 03:41 PM »

Excellent, thanks!

564

Living Room / Re: Dropbox and privacy (or lack of)

« Last post by dr_andus on March 02, 2014, 02:01 PM »

Besides, if you have no relationship with my business then what are you doing downloading my files?

-Innuendo (March 02, 2014, 12:51 PM)

I may be downloading your files because I am a potential customer, I am visiting your website, considering your business, and I may download some product spec PDF document that you have made public and which is hosted on the Dropbox for Business account. That is the scenario we are talking about.

Just because I have visited your website and downloaded your file, it doesn't mean that I want Dropbox to give you my name and email address without me even realising it. It's another thing if you tell me that you only let me download the file if I give you my details. Then at least I have the choice and can decide not to proceed.

And as app103 had described above, I may not even be knowingly downloading a file. It might be that I just happen to stumble upon your website and download an image file hosted on your Dropbox account, thus being tricked into sharing my name and email address with you.

Are you really happy to make your name and email address available to any website you visit or for every file you download from the internet?

565

Living Room / Re: Dropbox and privacy (or lack of)

« Last post by dr_andus on March 02, 2014, 07:18 AM »

So, a 1 pixel transparent gif file embedded on a web page, served from a Dropbox for Business account would be a great way to gather a big list of names & email addresses of your website's visitors.

-app103 (March 01, 2014, 11:17 PM)

Yes, this was exactly my concern. Moreover, this would be segmented data of potentially higher-value visitors because we can presume that Dropbox Basic and Pro users are more sophisticated than your average internet user. E.g. they are more likely to be syncing data across various platforms and own and use smartphones and tablets.

If this is really how this is going to work, then this raises again the question whether this is approaching a spyware situation. They are definitely not going out of their way to alert Basic and Pro users about this significant change. They don't mention this either in the email users receive, or on the blog post they link to. You will have to read the Privacy Policy yourself to find this out, which only a tiny fraction of users are likely to do, especially as there is nothing in the email suggesting that there is a drastic change. I find this a very underhanded way of selling out the Basic and Pro user base to the Dropbox for Business user base.

There is an analogy here with LinkedIn, whereby you can opt in to the feature which allows you to see who has visited your profile. However, there is a very clear warning step where you need to agree to participate, and it's reciprocal, i.e. others will also see when you have viewed their profile. Moreover, this feature is available to both free and paying users. What Dropbox is doing is very hush-hush. It looks to me like they don't want Basic and Pro users to find out that their identity is being sold to Dropbox for Business users.

566

General Software Discussion / Re: The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)

« Last post by dr_andus on March 01, 2014, 06:27 PM »

Unfortunately, my adventure with AVG 2014 was of short life. After 2 weeks of everything functioning correctly, I suddenly started getting BSODs (Win 8.1 x64). Culprit was AVG 2014, and everything has been normal since I removed it. Pity, I liked the AV and firewall.

-Attronarch (March 01, 2014, 05:19 PM)

I'd used AVG for possibly 10 years, and it was only AVG 2014 that stopped working properly. So something must have gone awry with this latest incarnation.

567

Living Room / Re: Dropbox and privacy (or lack of)

« Last post by dr_andus on March 01, 2014, 06:19 PM »

I agree with this interpretation. This pertains to Dropbox for Business accounts. The way I see it Dropbox is making available a way for business owners to see what kind of file transfers their employees are engaging in and with whom.

-Innuendo (March 01, 2014, 05:36 PM)

Not so. The privacy policy clearly says “If you are not a Dropbox for Business user but interact with a Dropbox for Business user..." So this is not about employees. It's about Basic and Pro account users who have no relationship with that particular business, they just happened to download a file from that account, perhaps even without realising it was a file on a Dropbox account. E.g. some people host image files on Dropbox. You visit their webpage and automatically download the image. According to this the owner of that website may receive your full name and your email address. Is that reasonable?

568

Living Room / Re: Dropbox and privacy (or lack of)

« Last post by dr_andus on March 01, 2014, 06:15 PM »

If something is uploaded to any Dropbox account and made available to others for download, it is perfectly reasonable for the poster to be able to know who has downloaded the file.

-xtabber (March 01, 2014, 08:39 AM)

My problem is this: will any Basic or Pro Dropbox user (i.e. not a Dropbox for Business customer) know that every time they download a file that originates from a Dropbox for Business account, their name and email address may be made available to that account?

E.g. what does "accessing stuff shared by that user" mean? It doesn't sound legally or technically precise. So, let's say that you're browsing the internet while being logged in as a Basic Dropbox user. You end up on a website (unrelated to Dropbox) where you can download a PDF file. You download it without realising that it was hosted on a Dropbox for Business service, and your name and email address will be made available to the owner of that Dropbox for Business account without you knowing. How is that reasonable?

I have a Wordpress blog and I do not get told the name and email address of everyone who has visited my blog or downloaded stuff from it. The same goes for files available in general for download on the internet. You don't expect that the sites where you download them from get your full name and email address. Quite possibly people would change their internet usage drastically if they knew beforehand that they would be personally identified every time they download something.

569

General Software Discussion / Re: Are Tables Required Or Not?

« Last post by dr_andus on March 01, 2014, 04:49 AM »

Again my real question is if tables can be eliminated as a tool in data storage/presentation?

-CodeTRUCKER (February 28, 2014, 12:12 PM)

OK, thanks for clarifying. I'd break down your question a bit further. There are two underlying assumptions there: 1) that there is (or should be) just one general way of working with data for everyone (with or without tables), and 2) that it is necessary or desirable to have all the solutions present in one single software.

Concerning 1), I'd say that people's information-related tasks vary so much that one workflow (working with or without tables) will never cover everyone's needs. Concerning 2), there may be benefits for using two or more different systems together to cover a workflow.

So it should be possible to use an information management (IM) software that does not have good support for tables most of the time, and occasionally resort to software that specialises in tables for the odd table-related tasks. A decent IM software should allow you to import the table somehow (as text or as image) or at least link to the file with the table, so it can be launched from within the IM, which can serve as a project hub (dashboard) for the given task group.

In fact this is exactly my situation. I use ConnectedText (a personal wiki) for my database and information analysis. But creating tables is a pain in CT (at least for me), so if I need to work out a problem using tables then I use Treesheets or an Excel sheet, and then I link to those files from CT or take a screenshot and insert the image into the CT document.

Similarly, since CT is mostly a text-based system, I prefer to use Surfulater for capturing and storing webpages, but if it's an important page for a particular CT document, I can link to the captured webpage in Surfulater from CT directly. So you can have your cake and eat it. 

But if tables are crucial for you, why not make a software that is strong with tables the centre of your system, and use other 'satellite' software to complement the tasks that it might not cover? In fact wouldn't InfoQube fit the bill?

570

General Software Discussion / Re: Are Tables Required Or Not?

« Last post by dr_andus on February 28, 2014, 11:54 AM »

The topic here is are tables essential?

-CodeTRUCKER (February 28, 2014, 11:25 AM)

Well, I'm not sure what you're getting at then. It seems like you have already decided that tables are essential for you. So what are you asking? Are you looking for software that have good support for tables OR are you looking for arguments to convince you that tables are not essential?

571

General Software Discussion / Re: Are Tables Required Or Not?

« Last post by dr_andus on February 28, 2014, 06:18 AM »

MyInfo lets you expand and contract parts of the list so you do not in fact have to waste time scrolling!

-TaoPhoenix (February 28, 2014, 05:39 AM)

I was making a different point. In a table you see the child info horizontally in the same row (i.e. it's in the line of sight), while to view the same info as an outline you may need to scroll down, especially with more complex tables. Of course you can collapse outlines, but then you won't see the data in the collapsed bits, so it would be more difficult to review that information as in a table.

Actually, an option that's closer to a table-like organisation is a mind map (such as Freeplane). Then the info is still more horizontally presented than a traditional vertical outline.

572

General Software Discussion / Re: Are Tables Required Or Not?

« Last post by dr_andus on February 28, 2014, 04:10 AM »

My question is... if tables are not used how does one handle the data normally contained in tables?

-CodeTRUCKER (February 26, 2014, 09:26 AM)

The alternative would be some kind of a hierarchical list (i.e. outline), whereby each piece of the column data is represented as a child of the row item (parent). It's a less efficient way of presenting information, as the list gets longer than the table would have been (you have to scroll down etc.), so it's just a workaround in situations when tables are not available or are a pain to construct (such as with wiki syntax).

573

Living Room / Re: Dropbox and privacy (or lack of)

« Last post by dr_andus on February 27, 2014, 03:39 AM »

I wouldn't go as far as to call it 'spyware'- they're using the business intelligence of what you voluntarily give them with your account, with what you involuntarily give any site.  I just hate conflating the term 'spyware' with other practices.

-wraith808 (February 26, 2014, 06:49 PM)

OK, I take your point. I should have used inverted commas to emphasise that I was using the term metaphorically, not literally.

But... in the email they say to you "We don’t sell your personal information to third parties," which sounds reassuring. You will have to bother to click on the Privacy Policy link to find out that they may share your " name, email address and IP address" with Dropbox for Business users. Now, how is a "Dropbox for Business user" not a third party? It may not be to them, but they would be to me, as a bog-standard Basic (non-paying) or Pro (paying customer)?

So is it no longer spying if they tell you in convoluted ways that they are spying on you and selling that on to "second parties"? Or are they just enabling these "second parties" to spy on you?

I suspect that the vast majority of the Basic and Pro account users will never learn that this is happening unless they find it out from the media (like I did). Thanks, El Reg!

574

Living Room / Re: Dropbox and privacy (or lack of)

« Last post by dr_andus on February 26, 2014, 05:29 PM »

Yes, that's what I was concerned about. I really liked Dropbox so far, so it's such a pity that they are turning it into some sort of spyware now.

I guess one could argue that they need to monetise the "free" Dropbox users, but it doesn't sound like becoming a paid Dropbox user would provide one with any more privacy.

575

Living Room / Re: Dropbox and privacy (or lack of)

« Last post by dr_andus on February 26, 2014, 03:14 PM »

How would this actually work? I presume that one would need to have the Dropbox app running on the PC or be logged on in a browser for Dropbox to see who exactly had downloaded the given file (?)

-dr_andus (February 26, 2014, 11:46 AM)

According to their website there's a web-based admin interface. I suspect there's also some way to download some kind of activity log using desktop software or a mobile app.
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Vurbal (February 26, 2014, 01:42 PM)

Thanks. But actually I was thinking about it from the non-business users' perspective who do not want to have their personal data collected by Dropbox for Business users. E.g. does one need to log out from all Dropbox accounts and exit Dropbox apps before clicking on an innocent-looking URL of a file that might be coming from a Dropbox for Business account (to avoid being "data collected")?