Recent Posts

5551

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: MS Virtual PC is now free

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 12, 2006, 04:54 PM »

I was more thinking of VPC being bundled with Vista !!

This is precisely waht has caused them hassles with monopoly claims because of Intenet Explorer and Windows Media Player being distributed with the OS. There have been monopoly cases now in the US and Europe over these and everytime MS have lost the case. You'd think there must be at least one person with a brain there that can see the problems looming ahead?

Actually I think they have got a brain on this - the fines are less than the potential benefits of locking people into MS software (by default) and then being able to monopolise and rewrite standards that affect all platforms.

5552

Living Room / Re: Microsoft: End of support for Windows 98 and Windows Me

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 12, 2006, 04:49 PM »

FWIW I have installed and updated Win98SE in VMWare (just so I have an archived last edition).

If anyone wants to do this my advice is to proceed as follows ...

Do your normal install from the CD

Go to the MS website and find the download for Internet Explorer 6 SP1 and install that.

Once you have done that you can use Windows Update to update to the latest level (including extras like WMP 9). As installed (ie. with IE 5) windows update does not work.

Request for VMWare/Win98 soundcard help

Anyone got a copy of the Creative PCI Audio drivers for VMWare + Windows 98 ? the one on Creative's website is an upgrade installer (ie. it is incomplete). It does install the drivers to make the sound card work but doesn't include the MIDI stuff. I don't need the MIDI stuff but every time Win98 loads it tries to find the MIDI stuff and complains. I know there was a Creative Driver which was compatible with VMWare a while ago but it doesn't seem to be there any more.

5553

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: MS Virtual PC is now free

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 12, 2006, 02:17 PM »

Watch out for the next wave of monopoly anti-trust cases ...

5554

Living Room / Re: MS working on an MP3 player to challenge the iPod dominance

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 12, 2006, 12:18 PM »

...
Apple have recently come to blows in Europe (esp. with the French government) for the inability to interoperate MP3/WMA/iTune formats ...

-Carol Haynes (July 11, 2006, 02:33 PM)

Do you what the French law had to say about OGG and other "free" and/or "open" formats? I haven't been following very closely
 

-housetier (July 12, 2006, 09:45 AM)

Not really - I only knew about the Apple debacle because it made the TV news!

5555

Podcast Radio Show / Re: TIME TO SUBMIT YOUR PODCAST SEGMENTS FOR THE NEXT PODCAST

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 12, 2006, 08:05 AM »

Trouble is a lot of podcast client software (such as iTunes) only support MP3.

5556

Living Room / Free VMNToolbox

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 12, 2006, 07:08 AM »

Got an email today offering a freedownload of VMNToolbox (from the writers of AceHTML).

I haven't tried it yet but it does look interesting and useful ...

See http://toolbox.vmn.net/ for details and download

5557

Living Room / Re: MS working on an MP3 player to challenge the iPod dominance

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 02:33 PM »

Essentially, Microsoft will scan your computer for any songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store and make those songs available to you from URGE for free, and in higher-quality Windows Media Audio (WMA) format.

free or not, that does not sound like something i could care less about.

-mouser (July 11, 2006, 02:04 PM)

If you don't use iTunes or have an iPod it is irrelevant but for anyone who has bought music from iTunes and doens't want to buy an iPod it could be a killer feature.

Apple have recently come to blows in Europe (esp. with the French government) for the inability to interoperate MP3/WMA/iTune formats on all portable players - so much so that Apple was ready to withdraw the iTunes store from France until a compromise was reached. If MS do this it will give a huge incentive for anyone who wants to move away from an iPod to do so as they won't lose their investment in iTunes tracks in the process.

Personally I find the whole DRM saga (Apple, WMA and Audible its irrelevant) totally stupid! All of these formats can be burned to standard CDs so in what sense is the content protected? It doesn't take a genius to use iTunes or Windows Media Player to burn a disc and then rip it as MP3 (perfectly legal for personal use). If people are then going to distribute files illegally what is to stop them (not that I am suggesting any one should). So the illegal distribution continues unabated and again the only people who really suffer are the legitimate purchasers of DRMed music. It is just plain stupid!

5558

Official Announcements / Re: Best Of Blog - An Exciting New Feature at DonationCoder.com

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 02:26 PM »

Great idea ... and it puts pressure on me to get my panoram software review sorted! Sorry it is slipping to August at this rate but it will be done oh mighty scourge of the mice world!

5559

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Email Attachments Browser

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 02:24 PM »

I have just posted a note on their reatures request board - see if anything comes of it.

-Carol Haynes (July 01, 2006, 04:08 PM)

Stupid me - if you exit from the system tray it leaves a couple of things dormant in the task manager (for when you restart X1) but it does close files so you can work on them.

One warning about indexing multiple Outlook archives ...

When you specify extra PST files for indexing extra Outlook 'Profiles' are produced. Nothing bad in that and you don't have to think about them ... unlesss ...

If you want to uninstall X1 you need to delete the profile from Outlook manually as X1 doesn't tidy up. Further more when you uninstall X1 it doesn't remove the index from your system so that if you then later reinstall it will pick up from the old index where it left off. By that stage the Outlook profiles originally set up and used by X1 probably don't exist. You get a harmless looking complaint from X1 to which you glibly click OK (as we all do) and then the email is read - all is well with the world. Until that is you reopen Outlook when you will find the archived PST files you have accessed are loaded at Outlook startup so that you have a long wait (if you have a large archive of emails) - also because they aren't associated with the current profile you can't close them to remove them! The only solution I have found is to close Outlook, rename the main live Outlook PST file, delete the profile (from Control Panel > Email applet) and then restart Outlook and allow it to build a new profile. You then have to enter all your email account settings again as they are part of the profile and import you old email (either by swapping live PST file, or Open and copy you old PST file). PITA - and right royal one too.

The best solution is to kill off the index in X1's options before you uninstall and then physically delete the index folder (usually in %USERPROFILES%\Application Data\) after the uninstall is complete, then manually delete the extra unneeded Outlook profiles.

5560

Living Room / MS working on an MP3 player to challenge the iPod dominance

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 12:28 PM »

Interesting article - yet another area for MS to try for a monopoly - but this time it will probably be a bit more of an uphill struggle ...

This is an interesting part of the the article:

The most alluring aspect of Argo is a new service that Microsoft is
reportedly going to offer with the device. Essentially, Microsoft will
scan your computer for any songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store
and make those songs available to you from URGE for free, and in
higher-quality Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. Microsoft will pay the
record companies fees that are owed on the songs, so the net effect is
that you've purchased the songs again, but Microsoft has paid for them.
Although these costs are expected to be extravagant, Microsoft feels
it's the only way it can overcome the final hurdle of moving people
from the iPod: If users can't bring their music collections with them,
many won't abandon Apple's device.

See full article at: http://www.windowsit...eID/53964/53964.html

5561

Site/Forum Features / Re: Formatted lists

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 09:33 AM »

Yep it works for me on IE - but I am also getting a lot of scripting errors in IE (status bar bottom left shows warning triangles on most pages).

• item
• item
• item

Any idea how to fix this for Firefox

Does it work for nesting?

• item level 1
  
  • item level 2
  • item level 2
• item level 1
• item level 1

YEP here's the code for a nested list ...

[Select]

[list]
[li]item level 1[list][li]item level 2[/li][li]item level 2[/li][/list][/li]
[li]item level 1[/li]
[li]item level 1[/li]
[/list]

Note the indented (level 2) items are entirely within the 'li' tags for the first item in the top level list.

Here it is again, modified to empahsize the structure:

[Select]

[list]
  [li]
    item level 1
      [list]
        [li]
          item level 2
        [/li]

        [li]
          item level 2
        [/li]
      [/list]
  [/li]

  [li]
    item level 1
  [/li]

  [li]
    item level 1
  [/li]
[/list]

5562

Developer's Corner / Re: how broken is your firefox today?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 07:26 AM »

Here it is in mine ...

5563

Site/Forum Features / Re: Formatted lists

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 07:23 AM »

It's strange becaue the list button used to work.

5564

Site/Forum Features / Re: Formatted lists

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 05:35 AM »

I have added a new sticky topic with the original SMF help pages onto the Help & Guidance forum here.

By the way the list button doesn't work properly for me ...

I typed:

item
item
item

Selected all three lines and hit the button and it produced:

[Select]

[list]
[li]item
item
item[/li]
[/list]

which yields

• item
  item
  item

5565

DC Website Help and Extras / Forum Help Page (original SMF documentation for users)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 05:34 AM »

Covers most aspects of SMF forums (but not mods applied by Mouser - check the relevant Help topics in the forums above for those).

https://www.donation...ndex.php?action=help

5566

Site/Forum Features / Re: Formatted lists

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 05:26 AM »

https://www.donation...ndex.php?action=help

For bulletin board code (not including some of the extensions mouser has added) try:
https://www.donation...elp;page=post#bbcref

There is actually a help button (next to Forum Home) for SMF forums but the Help button on the button bar has been removed (Mouser ???)

5567

Best E-mail Client / Re: opera deserves a real try

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 05:21 AM »

Thanks guys - I think I am going to stick to Outlook for the mo - having tried the others I don't feel particularly comfortable with them. Plus X1 nicely indexes all all my Outlook mail (including all my archived stuff) which is very handy.

5568

General Software Discussion / Re: Office or Vista: Pick one in 2007

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 05:17 AM »

I think I will probably stick with Windows/Office XP until the next versions emerge. Can't really see any benefit for me in either upgrade.

5569

General Software Discussion / Re: Photo panorama creation

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 11, 2006, 05:15 AM »

Thanks I think we are on the same wavelength. I have tried all of these (and also PanaVue ImageAssembler) and think AutoPanoPro and PTGui are coming out tops. There is also Hugin (similar to PTGui but free).

Stay tuned ...

5570

Living Room / Windows VISTA Basic GUI scrapped after negative user feedback

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 10, 2006, 03:12 PM »

What's this ... MS 'listening' to users .... wow ..



Article here: http://www.winsupers...vista_scrapmetal.asp

More images: http://blogs.technet...06/07/06/440510.aspx

5571

Best E-mail Client / Re: opera deserves a real try

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 10, 2006, 10:19 AM »

Thanks - except Outlook apparently. I know I can go via Outlook Express to Opera (but it is a bit of a hassle way to do things) but it isn't clear if I can go back?

5572

Mouser's Zone / Re: IDEA - Webpage archiving

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 10, 2006, 06:40 AM »

oo good idea - at the moment I am trying to plough my way through two university assignments (both late - and I haven't finished reading the course materials yet), prepare for a tutorial on Saturday and write a comparative review of Panorama software.

When I have a life again I'll spend a bit more time with the three note taking offerings!

5573

Best E-mail Client / Re: opera deserves a real try

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 10, 2006, 06:37 AM »

What are the Import and Export facilities like in Opera Mail ? (Account settings / mail / contacts / folder structures etc.)

Having just installed and removed theBat and Courier  I don't want to install any more email clients until I know in advance that I can easily move all my email and contact related info from Outlook XP (and back again if I need to).

Thanks

5574

General Software Discussion / Re: Toying with TheBat! - any plugin suggestions?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 09, 2006, 02:08 PM »

I've gone back to Outlook for the time being - theBat isn't for me (shame really - if they get HTML sorted out and import/export options then I may reconsider).

Courier appears to be in limbo but Rose City are still wanting to develop it (they are looking for programmers if anyone is interested in some work). I have emailed them to ask what is going on and put a bid in for a few features in the next version if/when it appears. Again until it has decent import/export functions I think it is a non-starter.

To me an absolute pre-requiste of any email client is that it should be able to export you mail in a format readable by other email programs - and esp. the industry standards like OE and Outlook. They should at least be able to Export! (Courier seems to lack this basic functionality)

5575

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Google Mail Web Clips - RSS support for the email client I like best

« Last post by Carol Haynes on July 09, 2006, 06:15 AM »

Mmmm ... spam fritters .... to die for (literally)