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6226

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MetaProducts TrayIcon Pro 1.7.219

« Last post by Darwin on November 15, 2006, 11:49 AM »

I'm waiting for Keylaunch 3 to be released - I've been checking the site regularly so that I can "swoop" in and download a trial when it is released into the wild. Anyway,... ObjectDock is still installed on my system but hasn't been run since I posted the above. I'm going to leave it in place for now on the off-chance that I am motivated in the future to play with it, but it's not really looking too likely at this point. Actually, I am fighting the urge to get rid of it because I don't like unused apps on my system.

Whitelion, I'm glad you've found a solution that works for you! I've used iconoid in the past and liked it. I used it to save my desktop layout  - I used to use a multi-media projector to give Powerpoint presentations and always had to change the resolution on my notebook from 1024*768 to 800*600 and back again. This always messed up the arrangement of icons on my desktop. I only have 3 icons on my desktop now, and don't use a multi-media projector at the moment, so don't have anything installed to handle that.

6227

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your Favorite Recent Computer Game, and Why?

« Last post by Darwin on November 15, 2006, 02:01 AM »

Define recent... Four years in Korea left me a StarCraft nut (1995?) and I love the three Combat Fligth Simulators by Microsoft (last one released in 2003).

6228

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MetaProducts TrayIcon Pro 1.7.219

« Last post by Darwin on November 14, 2006, 06:38 PM »

I received a reply from the developer:

Yes, the default Speed Optimization setting has changed from "Optimize for Memory" to "Optimize for Speed". Was having too many people get a bad experience with it having little bits of choppyness when it was doing routines to save memory, I decided that along with the new zoom algorithm I'm using I'd rather give people the best performing dock experience possible

If you're in need of more memory though yes you might want to look at moving it back to "Optimize for Memory"

I can confirm that doing as he says "tames the beast", though RAM usage is in the 4-5 MB range now.

6229

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MetaProducts TrayIcon Pro 1.7.219

« Last post by Darwin on November 14, 2006, 02:42 PM »

Hi Whitelion,

Just an update: the latest beta of ObjectDock 1.49 (b5) is out. I installed it to see how it performs and did the following:

Shutdown the main dock (leaving only the tabbed dock)
removed taskbar and system tray tabs
removed all docklets
removed start menu
redirected a couple of shortcuts to my favoured apps (Take Command for the command prompt and PSP X for graphics)

Closed it and restarted it: RAM usage varies between 12 and 15 MB. Not good... The latest stable release (from August - 1.3), as noted above, ran much more lightly.

Just thought I'd update this "thought". I'm off to whinge about it on the Stardock forum. The other thing that this exercise made me appreciate is that with TrueLaunchBar loaded there really is little incentive to run ObjectDock and I doubt it's going to make it to the end of the week on my system.

6230

General Software Discussion / Re: For those that need a System Information Tool and haven't heard of SIW

« Last post by Darwin on November 10, 2006, 12:18 PM »

Fabulous! Thank you, Ken for twisting JoTo's arm to post about this - I'd never heard of it and have been looking for something to replace Everest. I love the cartoon in the about dialogue, too - I use it all the time in my introductory Biology and Evolution lecture:

6231

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox 2 hints and tips

« Last post by Darwin on November 10, 2006, 12:08 PM »

My tongue (thumb?) was firmly in my cheek when I posted my comments above on the variety of English spellings. That was the point - there is a great deal of variation in English spellings around the world and Carol didn't need to be corrected on her spelling of realise! Now, I *think* all Jammo was trying to do was to illustrate that FF's spellchecker picked up on that non-US spelling, not start anything between people who use US spellings and those who do not.

6232

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MetaProducts TrayIcon Pro 1.7.219

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2006, 11:42 PM »

KeyLaunch sounds interesting - I'll watch for the next version.

Thanks, Whitelion. Cool find.

6233

General Software Discussion / Re: SCRIBUS - Open Source Desktop Publishing

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2006, 11:35 PM »

Wow... I wonder what an "attractive" transitional price will look like?

6234

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MetaProducts TrayIcon Pro 1.7.219

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2006, 04:16 PM »

Just an update (couldn't find this thread last week!): VistaStartMenu 2 has been released as a functional beta and is quite stable. Check it out here

6235

Post New Requests Here / Re: SysTray "lost icons" recovery app ..

« Last post by Darwin on November 06, 2006, 01:00 PM »

Yeah, I'm a happy PSTF user as well - took advantage of the dc discount and have no regrets. I was skeptical about paying for features that are already part of XP but "came around". In fact, I posted my concerns, and had them answered, here and  here .

Josh is right (below): after testing a number of similar applications, I think PS Tray Factory is best in class.

6236

Living Room / Re: Windows Media Player 11 Won't install,anyone else have this problem?

« Last post by Darwin on November 02, 2006, 07:28 AM »

I had the same problem installing the last beta. IIRC, I had to turn off all my security apps in order to complete installation. This release installed right over that installation without a hiccough, though...

Hope this works out for you.

6237

General Software Discussion / Re: Best Auto-complete Intelli-sense type utility ?

« Last post by Darwin on October 31, 2006, 02:29 PM »

I agree with urlwolf, and apologise for the role that I have played in deflecting this thread from its original theme 

Renaming or even moving the thread may indeed be a good idea as I imagine that people visiting it for the first time are overwhelmed (or underwhelmed?) by the lack of congruence between its title and the bulk of its contensts.

6238

ProcessTamer / Re: Is Cacheman similar to Process Tamer?

« Last post by Darwin on October 31, 2006, 02:17 PM »

Sorry, I followed the link to this thread from the "new" posts section and failed to pay attention enough to notice the original question about Cacheman and ProcessTamer being similar. I would have to say no. I have ProcessTamer installed and running - it's purpose is to monitor and control how much of the CPU running processes co-opt for themselves. Cacheman is much more about controlling free RAM. It does, as fodder points out, feature a number of cache tweaks, but I never noticed much of a difference in performance in playing around with them.

So, to recap, despite its name Cacheman/CachemanXP is a realtime RAM usage monitor/tweaker that features some cache tweak settings while ProcessTamer is a realtime process monitor...

6239

ProcessTamer / Re: Is Cacheman similar to Process Tamer?

« Last post by Darwin on October 31, 2006, 01:57 PM »

I own a license for CachemanXP and haven't had it installed in over a year. I found that I was obsessing about "free RAM" when it was running (not its fault, per se). The surprise came when I uninstalled it - my computer felt much more responsive and the world didn't come to an end when free RAM dipped below 70MB (with Cacheman installed I was getting antsy when free RAM dropped below 300MB - I'm on a notebook with a gig of RAM)...

It's abandonware, anyway, as far as I can tell. There have been no updates in over a year and version 1.2 was promised for November 2004 and version 2 for Feb. 2005. They're still officially at versoin 1.1.2... though a beta version of 1.2 is available. If you visit the user forum, there are one or two people who still post occasionally, but overall one gets the sensation of being in a ghost town.

Somewhere there is a thread that discusses the pros/cons of these kind of apps but I can't find it.

6240

General Software Discussion / Re: Sophos no whiner

« Last post by Darwin on October 31, 2006, 11:13 AM »

Back to my thinking chair then! Pondering, pondering...

6241

General Software Discussion / Re: Best Auto-complete Intelli-sense type utility ?

« Last post by Darwin on October 30, 2006, 11:38 AM »

I've been running DA as my primary "launcher" for about five days now. It's very solid and very light on resources - it's also, as noted above, very light on resources. I miss AW's spellchecking/autocorrection feature though... so, I've been trying the apps mentioned in this thread . If you factor in the added overhead of running one of these spell checkers alongside DA - tinyspell at @ 8MB and As-U-Type and WindSpring both at over 14MB (and As-U-Type keeps reserving more and more RAM each time you use it) - AW compares quite favourably with DA. If only there was a way to tweak launch times with it - I'm going to experiment with the various *.ini files for AW.

Added in edit: these other spell checkers offer varying degrees of functionality. AW is "sort of" in between Windspring and As-U-Type in that it will auto-correct your typing as you type, with no other input/interaction with it required from the user. It doesn't offer a drop down menu of alternatives as do all of the spellcheckers mentioned above.

6242

General Software Discussion / Re: really good spell check tool wanted

« Last post by Darwin on October 30, 2006, 12:53 AM »

Thanks tinjaw - I'll keep playing with it!

6243

General Software Discussion / Re: really good spell check tool wanted

« Last post by Darwin on October 29, 2006, 02:03 PM »

Hmmm... tinyspell has a nice feature set and minimally impacts the system but doesn't really do what I'd like it to - I'm after functionality more in line with what I imagine As-U-Type offers: on the fly correction of spelling mistakes with the option of having the programme offer me some choice in what corrections are made - i.e. not simply replacing my typo with what it perceives to be the nearest match but offering me some alternatives a la Word's spellchecker... I'll keep looking!

6244

General Software Discussion / Re: really good spell check tool wanted

« Last post by Darwin on October 29, 2006, 01:23 PM »

Holy sheepshit, Batman! tinyspell+ is only $5! Compare this with the competition: the going rate seems to be $40-50 for all except QuickSpell, which is $24.95. I'm peripherally interested in this functionality (though I already enjoy it with ActiveWords - I'm considering not running AW any longer) and wonder if any of the posters here that are using these various apps can comment on their respective "footprints"?

Thanks,

Mike

PS am downloading tinyspell as I write this...

6245

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Combine Find&Run Robot with Launchbar Commander

« Last post by Darwin on October 29, 2006, 01:18 PM »

cemole -I just posted in the thread that lanux128 pointed you to and note that you haven't added your support there yet!

6246

Find And Run Robot / Re: A unified FARR / Launcher Interface Proposal

« Last post by Darwin on October 29, 2006, 01:17 PM »

I *SWEAR* (too much, according to my wife) that I've posted here in the past to add my vote for a merger of the functionality of F&RR and LC and lo and behold I'm wrong. Whodda thunkit? Anyway, put me down as in support of this idea, particularly if Allen's qualifiers are part of the vision adopted and (to paraphrase Allen) knowing Mouser this is no doubt the route that will be taken...

6247

General Software Discussion / Re: Eight security sandboxes reviewed by Gizmo

« Last post by Darwin on October 28, 2006, 11:31 AM »

I've been using Sandboxie for a long time and haven't had any problems with incompatibility.

6248

General Software Discussion / Re: Sophos no whiner

« Last post by Darwin on October 27, 2006, 09:05 AM »

In other words, they're only detecting based on known viruses, not doing behavioral blocking? Bad bad.

Not good. I declined a similar offer from ZoneAlarm to upgrade to their security suite that comes with an integrated AV and will do the same with this offer from webroot. I don't like bloated security apps anyway.

6249

General Software Discussion / Re: Outlook 2003 - PST file corruption. Is it X1 ?

« Last post by Darwin on October 27, 2006, 09:02 AM »

Hi Clive,

Lookout is what I've reverted to from X1 (used Lookout a lot two years ago). Two things to note about the situation I described about X1 and pst files: I haven't had a problem since I uninstalled X1 (actually, I haven't had a problem since I completely disabled X1, though I've since uninstalled it) and X1 is about to release a significant update that is supposed to fix, among other things, problems with Outlook (though neither of the issues reported in this thread are mentioned specifically). Note, the Upgrade Considerations:

- Beginning with the Enterprise Client Version 5.6, all network functionality will be restricted in the client by default.
- Customers who upgrade to 5.6 will lose access to network drives, un-cached Exchange email and Public Folders.
- If you would like to upgrade to 5.6 but need access to these features, please contact your administrator to have these features enabled using Microsoft Group Policy.
- Users upgrading to the Enterprise Client Version 5.6 will be forced to re-index

6250

General Software Discussion / Re: Sophos no whiner

« Last post by Darwin on October 26, 2006, 11:17 PM »

Just to clarify - I already have SpySweeper - the $10 adds the antivirus functionality to my existing subscript (lest the masses go running looking for SpySweeper at $10...!).