Recent Posts

5676

What's the Best? / Re: cd burning

« Last post by Darwin on May 15, 2007, 11:27 AM »

BTW I'm sticking with Burning Studio 6 for now as I'm very happy with it and have no need of the the added features in 7 (not as a paid upgrade, anyway)... I'm pretty unlikely to use it to rip CD's to mp3 and I'm completely uninterested in the ability to build DVD's from media!

5677

What's the Best? / Re: cd burning

« Last post by Darwin on May 15, 2007, 11:03 AM »

Thanks for doing that, Carol. I checked that before I posted but I guess not carefully enough!

5678

Found Deals and Discounts / Ashampoo Burning Studio 7 for $9.99

« Last post by Darwin on May 15, 2007, 10:35 AM »

I received this from Ashampoo this morning:

...you are using our program "Ashampoo Burning Studio 6".

We hope that you are satisfied with the product and that you have found the current version pleasant to use and helpful for your work.

Did you know that a NEW even more powerful successor is available?

"Ashampoo Burning Studio 7"

Hereby we would like to offer you the successor version for the special price of only USD 9.99 instead of USD 39.99.

This offer is only valid out of this email!

==================================================================
YES, I want to buy the full version NOW at this special price!

Click here:
[removed as personalised see next post below]

Check out the offer on Office 2006 (rebadged version of SoftMaker's wordprocessor and spreadsheet bundle) for $4.99 if you take them up on this!

5679

What's the Best? / Re: cd burning

« Last post by Darwin on May 15, 2007, 10:21 AM »

Wow! Ashampoo/SoftMaker Office 2006 for $4.99 (reg. $69.99) is well worth the money (if you don't already have MS Office). It's light on resources and runs from a thumbdrive. SoftMaker are beta testing a Presentation app (a la Powerpoint - I'm running the beta and it's slick) for Office 2007 right now, so I assume that this cheap price indicates that Office 2007 must be close to release...

EDIT: Just to clarify, Ashampoo/SoftMaker 2006 includes two apps: TextMaker (word processor - like Word) and PlanMaker (spreadsheets - like Excel). See Zaine's review of TextMaker here.

Also, I've cross-posted the gist of this and the preceding post to the Discounts found forum.

5680

What's the Best? / Re: cd burning

« Last post by Darwin on May 15, 2007, 10:12 AM »

Just to note that Ashampoo just offered me Ashampoo Burning Studio 7 for $9.99...

5681

Best Music Service / Re: Just started - Spool.fm

« Last post by Darwin on May 15, 2007, 10:06 AM »

What I meant whas my weird descrition "Online-Music-listening-website" 

-IQLover (May 15, 2007, 09:55 AM)

Oh, er, 

5682

Best Music Service / Re: Just started - Spool.fm

« Last post by Darwin on May 15, 2007, 09:49 AM »

Spool isn't such a weird name as it first appears as in English it has a number of meanings, one of which is

Verb 1. spool - transfer data intended for a peripheral device (usually a printer) into temporary storage

5683

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Super Flexible File Synchronizer Mini-Review

« Last post by Darwin on May 15, 2007, 08:45 AM »

OMG! I'm in love... I just compared a backup copy of My Documents (~50GB) to a copy that I made for backup and SFFS took less than five minutes to do it. DOpus' built in tool is still chugging away after about 15 minutes. My fingers are crossed for a big win in the contest (singing: "Luck be a lady tonight..."!).

5684

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: List of disc catalogers

« Last post by Darwin on May 14, 2007, 07:41 AM »

Looks great, Tom! My only complaint (and I've no idea how to work around it) is that to scroll to the right I have to scroll the whole page to the bottom of the table, scroll right, and then scroll back up to the point that I was reading at to see things like the price, last version, and remarks.

5685

General Software Discussion / Re: DVD playback software

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 11:59 PM »

Glad to help! Thank my Korean brother in law, though!

5686

Living Room / Re: Ask Leo: How do I fix this high CPU usage svchost virus or whatever it is?

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 11:58 PM »

That's too bad. As I said, I haven't bothered to try it (maybe I should have before I posted it  )!

5687

General Software Discussion / Re: DVD playback software

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 11:03 PM »

Both KMPlayer and GOMPlayer are free alternatives that should do the job. I can confirm that both will play DVDs, but haven't actually sat down and watched a DVD straight through on either of them.

5688

Living Room / Re: Ask Leo: How do I fix this high CPU usage svchost virus or whatever it is?

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 10:51 PM »

According the latest Windows Secrets newsletter (paid version) there is a viable interim fix available with a solution being promised in the near future. The fix allows you to use Microsoft Update (instead of the older verions, Windows Update).

The interim fix involves applying two patches, in order:

First download and install the fix from KB 927891.

Second download and install this update to the Windows Update Client.

Apparently, even if you don't use, or plan to use, Windows Auto-update feature, you need this new engine to run Microsoft Update.

I haven't tried this as I am perfectly happy using Carol's fix (reverted to Windows Update and using Office Update to update my Office 2003 installation). I don't have auto-update enabled so this really doesn't bother me.

5689

General Software Discussion / Re: Must-have apps in the System tray?

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 09:19 PM »

Thanks for clarifying that Carl - I was scratching my head trying to figure out how to accomplish it! This is great because PE was consuming 15-27% of my CPU before! Tamed quite nicely now. Cheers!

5690

General Software Discussion / Re: Any freeware alternatives to Instant ThumbView?

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 06:24 PM »

Thanks for the pointers Whitelion and Nighted - I had Xentient Thumbnails installed at one point but it's not there anymore (don't know when or why I removed it). I'm off to download it again!

5691

Living Room / Re: POLL: How many students are active here (instead of writing up?!)

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 08:08 AM »

Yeah - I was thinking of something like that but couldn't come up something that *felt right*. I like yours, though, it's perfect!

5692

General Software Discussion / Re: Any freeware alternatives to Instant ThumbView?

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 12:21 AM »

Yes, you're right Curt. I've tried the original Czech Budvar, which is why I specified that I was talking about the US one. I had a Czech flat-mate in university who was APPALLED by American Budweiser and incensed about the name. AFAIK, though, the "King of Beers" was originally brewed by a Czech immigrant to the States and he named it after the Czech version, probably never dreaming that it would become so successful!

5693

Living Room / Re: POLL: How many students are active here (instead of writing up?!)

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 12:16 AM »

maybe PhD students have more leisure time 

-Grorgy (May 12, 2007, 05:33 PM)

Yeah... that's more or less what I was thinking 

5694

Living Room / Re: Cached pages in IE - help please!

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 12:16 AM »

Drat - I hope the paper does the right thing. Sorry this didn't work out for you.

5695

General Software Discussion / Re: Movie Collector 5 released

« Last post by Darwin on May 13, 2007, 12:14 AM »

Just to note, Collectorz.com IS grandfathering their lifetime licence holders. Most people have three main issues with what happened, though: 1. the policy change was not announced in any way to their user base, 2. very little effort was made to change the website and the information on it to reflect the change (like a banner announcing it!) and 3. people who DID deserve a free upgrade to Movie Collector 5 courtesy of having purchased lifetime licences were charged anyway and only found out that they had been eligible by reading the user forums. Users that don't go near the forums are probably still in the dark.

So, it is not so much that collectorz.com "pulled a fast one" as it is that they didn't set things up for the transition very well.

5696

Living Room / Re: Cached pages in IE - help please!

« Last post by Darwin on May 12, 2007, 05:14 PM »

How'd you make out with this Calvin? Success, I hope...

5697

Living Room / Re: POLL: How many students are active here (instead of writing up?!)

« Last post by Darwin on May 12, 2007, 05:12 PM »

Wow - so far the PhD's have it... wonder what (if anything) that tells us  . This posting is a partial bump to the thread (I'm shameless). I hope people keep "voting". Not really the right word - "reporting"?

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to "report" and/or leave a note so far. Keep 'em coming!

5698

General Software Discussion / Re: Any freeware alternatives to Instant ThumbView?

« Last post by Darwin on May 12, 2007, 05:10 PM »

Ha ha... not unlike Budweiser in the States and Fosters in Australia - shipped and hyped around the world but far from the best that either country has to offer!

5699

General Software Discussion / Re: Transfer OS and APPs. from one laptop to another

« Last post by Darwin on May 12, 2007, 01:40 PM »

Why not just copy the image to your hard drive, slave her drive to your machine, then lay the image down on it there?  It is a lot faster, even with breaking open the cases to set it up.  Also, I can say from experience, don't shortcut and use a USB adapter.  THEY ARE SLOW when trying this.  If you want to do that, you might as well go from the DVD directly!

Funny - that's exactly what I did last week to mount the image so that I could extract some files from it for her. Worked like a charm and I'd already decided to do this when the computer is returned (Tuesday, apparently).

Thanks!

5700

Living Room / Re: Cached pages in IE - help please!

« Last post by Darwin on May 11, 2007, 11:52 PM »

Two points: I wrote the path you need wrong. It's c:\documents and settings\user\local settings\Temporary Internet Files. The other issue is that you may have overwritten the cached page with the updated one when you viewed the censored page... Just be aware of that. I'd search my computer for the IP address of the newspaper and see if you can come up with some buried copies. I keep finding Temporary Internet Folders in odd places with months old dates. I've no idea how or why they got there, given that I've changed the default setting to a folder on a different partition. This *might* work in your favour.