Recent Posts

5751

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

« Last post by Darwin on May 07, 2007, 05:32 PM »

Anyone have any experience using ZuluPad, the Pro version of which is on offer with a DonationCoder discount? It looks quite interesting and when I read about it, I immediately thought of this thread. Searching the archive, I can't find any mention of it. Am I simply profoundly misguided as to what this app is all about (not that that would ever happen to me!)?

5752

Living Room / Re: How do you spend your time on the computer?

« Last post by Darwin on May 07, 2007, 03:45 PM »

You're right, tinjaw. Unfortunately, my current project is so far removed from computing (though I am using a computer to do it!) that I'd never be allowed to switch to computer science (also don't have the background, sadly). I keep wondering if the university would just give me a PhD for time served! Nope. Apparently they feel that I should work on the project I outlined at the end of my first year. Hard asses!

Armando, I'm glad that you and  I (and mouser, vrgrrl and lilly to name but three others that I know of) are not alone. We're in good company, too, and we can look for inspiration to at least two people at donationcoder who have actually finished their PhD's - Zaine and Ken. Obviously, they've managed to balance a love for computers with their academic workloads, so it can be done!

5753

Found Deals and Discounts / InControl Giveawayoftheday May 7, 2007

« Last post by Darwin on May 07, 2007, 08:01 AM »

Giveawayoftheday is offering InControl today. I haven't tried it, but if you're looking for a startup manager, this might be worth a look.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Good programs for helping you manage what programs start with windows?

« Last post by Darwin on May 07, 2007, 07:58 AM »

Giveawayoftheday have InControl on offer for free today... I've never used it, but thought someone here might be interested in giving it a go.

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Living Room / Re: Joost Invites for All

« Last post by Darwin on May 06, 2007, 06:32 PM »

Thanks Carl! I sent out a few invites and set up an account for myself. Like you, I doubt that I'm going to use this much, but it will give me something to mess around with on my over-taxed machine (P-M 1.4Ghz, 1gig RAM, 64 MB shared video memory)...

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General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9

« Last post by Darwin on May 06, 2007, 02:56 PM »

Cool, thanks very much AbteriX!

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General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9

« Last post by Darwin on May 06, 2007, 02:01 PM »

Heh, heh, I was wondering the same thing Hirudin!

5758

General Software Discussion / Re: Firewalls - please, i can't be bothered.

« Last post by Darwin on May 06, 2007, 09:31 AM »

Hi all - I disabled ZoneAlarm Pro (latest build) a couple of days ago as I'm behind a hardware firewall and I *intend* to run ZA when I'm on other networks. I got sick and tired of weight of the thing... I have documented elsewhere the fact that I am experiencing 12 minute boots under XP Pro and general system slowdown. Disabling ZA and Winpatrol Plus (amongst others - RecentX, SnagIt, Mophy Accent) from running from the tray has liberated close to 200 MB of RAM and massively decreased the "hit" on my CPU. It's also cut startup times in half. They're still too long but a work in progress. As my harddrive is getting quite full, and I've already gotten rid of some big files, I've sprung for a larger 7200 rpm notebook drive. I'm curious to see if it will make much difference to the performance of my machine. Probably most noticeable difference will be reduced battery life and a dent in my bank account, but you know what they say about fools and money...

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

« Last post by Darwin on May 06, 2007, 03:43 AM »

Whoa, Nighted - you need to get to bed! Wait a second... it's now 1:41 am here, I guess I should take my own advice 

Anyway, brilliant news about qttabbar. I hope this does whar sri was after. I'm happy with the DOpus solution Tom pointed out to me and as I NEVER use Windows Explorer anymore, I probably won't bother with qttabbar, but it looks VERY nice.

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Living Room / Re: How do you spend your time on the computer?

« Last post by Darwin on May 06, 2007, 03:25 AM »

1:25am here... still running scared!

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

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 04:09 PM »

Thanks Tom! All you have to do is select "Image" from the samples and it displays the syntax. Nice...

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Living Room / Re: The Citicorp Building Repairs: A Tale of Engineering and Ethics

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 03:52 PM »

Thanks Mouser! That was a great read - and spurred a happy hour of googling and wikipeida surfing...

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

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 02:10 PM »

Dopus does do that - "mouse-over preview function" - via plugin but couldnt tell you anything beyond that ...

Dang! I *thought* that it did but couldn't find it before I posted (I did check, honest!). Anyway, irrespective of DOPus  , I still think that this is a good coding snack candidate for a Windows Explorer add-in. Right off to tinker with DOpus...

5764

General Software Discussion / Re: PC Diagnotic Software?

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 02:07 PM »

dk70 is right - I've generated a log file successfully with ProcessMonitor but I don't know what any of it means! Anyway, to address his other point, I don't have a problem with slow boots as I tend to leave my system running for days/weeks between boots (just set it to Standby when I'm not using it). However, 12 minutes plus to boot is surely abnormal, even for XP Pro, and I can't figure out where the problem lies. Thus, a tool that would help me diagnose this, and ProcessMonitor looks just the ticket, will be most welcome. So, I see this as part of the effort to identify

Where...the need for all this diagnosing come(s) from (rather than a quest) for wonder tool.

I just have to figure out what ProcessMonitor is telling me It looks like there are a lot of name not found errors, so I'm going to start by looking at those.

5765

Best Archive Tool / Re: StuffIt 11 is out...

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 12:30 PM »

Yup -that describes me, but the necessity of being able to exchange SIT files with friends and family really never materialized... and I found both Stuff-It 8 and 9 Deluxe (like you, I am not sure what compelled me to pay for the upgrade!) to be very bloated, requiring a lot of tinkering to tame. The big ticket features never seemed to work either, or turned out to be "gee-whiz, neato" features that turned out not to be very useful in the real world.

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General Software Discussion / Re: PC Diagnotic Software?

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 12:29 PM »

Nice list, J-Mac. I fondly remember Norton Utilities from DOS/Win 3 myself... I'd love something to troubleshoot my startup woes for me, for a start ( ). XP Por takes about 12 minutes to fully boot and I'm  stumped by it! NB Disabling ZoneAlarm Pro and Winpatrol Plus from starting with Windows has helped quite a bit. but I still can't see why it takes so long. An app that would do as you suggest (amongst other things) would be mana from heaven...

PS Not having a dualcore processor, maybe I'll have better luck with Process Monitor. I've got it on my harddrive somewhere...

5767

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

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 12:21 PM »

No doubt you're right, Tom. I started writing about FMView before I took a look at the price (it's not that bad compared to, say, QuickView Plus). I stopped using it because when I moved to Win98 and Office 97 somewhere along the way I wound up with MS' dumbed down version of QuickView (or was it 95 that introduced it? I no longer remember).

I *think* that sri is primarily interested in the mouse-over preview function. I half wonder if a plug-in for DOpus (or one of the other File Managers out there) is available/possible for something like this? I guess in a round-about way I've simply rephrased sri's original request... All we're looking for is a plug-in (even for Windows Explorer) that will tap into the view feature Curt talks about above...

Explorer can do that a lot faster itself - just activate the file (in View > Details or what the English term might be). Is not this feature a part of XP, or did I get it from some third-party program, and have forgotten?

Maybe this is a good candidate for a coding snack request?

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Best Archive Tool / StuffIt 11 is out...

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 10:18 AM »

Just received an offer to buy an upgrade from StuffIt 9.x to StuffIt 11 Deluxe. I guess they skipped version 10... AFAIK, they never really got version 9 working as advertised. I don't use StuffIt anymore, having won WinRar  in a donationcoder contest.

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

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 09:07 AM »

I *think* that the instructions for FMView installation date back to Win 3.x days! It's been a very long since I ran Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (ah, happy days)... I suspect that the installer will simply unpack all of the files into whatever folder it is run from, so if you have a folder C:.../my documents/downloads and you run it from there, it will install there. It seems to me that that is the way things worked in 16-bit versions of Windows.

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

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 08:01 AM »

... FMView 2.0 is another alternative that requires you to click on the file to view it, but it is more robust. It will allow you to preview all sorts of Office and other productivity apps' file contents, in addition to viewing most graphics formats, and is a bit cheaper at $16.50 vs. $19.95. I used to use version 1.x (still have a licence for it somewhere) with Win 3.11 and really liked it. I haven't tried version 2 with anything newer, though...

5771

General Software Discussion / Re: E Texteditor experiences?

« Last post by Darwin on May 05, 2007, 07:50 AM »

Brings new meaning to the term: "sexy beast"!

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Official Announcements / Re: cthorpe has agreed to be Discount Coordinator: thank you!

« Last post by Darwin on May 04, 2007, 06:34 PM »

  that's excellent tinjaw!

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Official Announcements / Re: cthorpe has agreed to be Discount Coordinator: thank you!

« Last post by Darwin on May 04, 2007, 03:51 PM »

Yes, thanks Carl. I'd actually forgotten that the call had gone out for someone to do this but having been reminded of it, I'm glad you've taken it on!

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General Software Discussion / Re: Movie Collector 5 released

« Last post by Darwin on May 04, 2007, 08:57 AM »

Thanks Carl!

5775

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

« Last post by Darwin on May 03, 2007, 12:42 PM »

I just did this last week with True Image for the Windows/Programs partition and Ashampoo Burning Studio for the Documents partition (I was in a hurry and couldn't get Acronis to burn to DVD, initially). I've had to access both "images" to grab files for my wife and had no trouble. Given that I backed up to DVD, though, I may not be a happy camper when I get her notebook back as it has been noted by Carol that restoring from DVD's with TrueImage is molasses slow. Unfortunately, I wiped the harddrive before I sent it in and reset it to a virgin XP install (I'm paranoid) so it's inevitable that I'm going to have to face this!