Recent Posts

6326

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Maya for Free

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 05, 2006, 06:24 PM »

Have you seen the prices !!

I downloaded it to see what it was like (and it looks VERY complicated). To buy the beginners pack of books costs $150 + $51 shipping in the US (£105 inc shipping in the UK - hey for once we get it cheaper) but seriously who is going to spand that much on manuals with no intention of spending £1500 on the software?

OK I know you don't need to buy the manuals and there is interesting stuff on the website, but what is the point of learning a really expensive bit of kit if you are never going to be able to produce anything useful?

If you look at the info in the help file it explains that not only are all backgrounds watermarked (otherwise known as completely plastered) but also all textures are watermarked too.

6327

Living Room / Re: Memory probs ... any ideas?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 05, 2006, 06:18 PM »

I wasn't using different memory sizes before. The mobo just seems to have problems with good RAM sticks when they are in more than one slot. It is strange!

6328

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 05, 2006, 08:58 AM »

To be fair neither Bridge not APE have photo management as their primary purpose.

6329

Living Room / Re: Memory probs ... any ideas?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 05, 2006, 08:55 AM »

Thanks - I'm back with 1Gb.

I tried combining my three memory sticks (2Gb combined) and it passed almost all of the tests but then failed after 1hr 56 minutes.

I have come to the conclusion that it must be a mobo issue - doesn't matter now but next time I buy a mobo I'll make sure I test out all possible memory configuartions while it is still under warranty!

6330

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: HDDlife Pro (and other disk-health reporters)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 05, 2006, 08:52 AM »

For Carol: Off topic - Beware:

Spoiler

How do we in England claim our waffle?

-m_s (April 05, 2006, 05:37 AM)

Had to think about that ...

LOL - haven't got a waffle iron but you are welcome to pancakes if you get to the Yorkshire Dales

6331

Living Room / Re: Memory probs ... any ideas?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 05, 2006, 05:33 AM »

Just got a new 1Gb stick of memory ... if I don't reappear you know things have gone badly! In which case an ambulance and a bottle of scotch would help Hope to see you all later!

6332

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: HDDlife Pro (and other disk-health reporters)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 05, 2006, 05:31 AM »

I have had a few drives go bad - all the SMART enabled drives have given me warning (which is a little reassuring) but then nothing beats proper backups ... ahem - I'd better do one!

6333

Living Room / Re: BitTorrent - why bother?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 05, 2006, 05:28 AM »

That's my feeling with Azureus too ... µTorrent was a lot easier to setup and is more selfexplanatory to use.

I get the feeling that Azureus can do anything you want (including ironing and making the supper) but it loses for me in the overkill of obscurely termed options. (I know they are probably technically correct terms but if you don't know what an option means I don't want to wade through pages of explanations and google searches to find a real English version!)

6334

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 05, 2006, 05:24 AM »

Can't help feeling the APE will take longer than Bridge to load as it has to load the whole of APE (including font tables and startup plugins).

6335

Site/Forum Features / Re: Unsubscribing a topic...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 05, 2006, 05:22 AM »

If you click "Profile and membership" on the tool bar on the right is a link to "Notifications and Email". Any subscribed threads are listed there and you can cancel subscriptions as you wish.

Note this includes board-wide subscription.

6336

Living Room / Re: Etch a Sketch

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 06:53 PM »

My initial reaction was yeah sure ... what a fake, but then I had a closer look and they are awesome!

I used to love Etch-a-sketch too - but my limit was a rather badly drawn house! Anyone remember spirograph ... I used to love that too!

6337

Best Firewall / Re: agnitum outpost v3 - the horror?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 06:48 PM »

I spent quite a while playing with Netveda but have now returned to the latest version of Outpost which seems to work pretty well as far as I can see. They have now added preset rules for common applications which means a lot fewer interruptions whilst Outpost learns what you allow to access the outside world. The ad blocker seems to coexist with AdMuncher quite happily and is configurable. I still don't trust the Spyware plugin to coexist with Webroot's SpySweeper so at the mo I have disable SpySweeper as the plugin feels less resource hungry - though I am not sure how it compares in effectiveness.

What do other Outpost users do about the Spyware plugin and other Anti-Spyware programs?

As I have posted elsewhere I have had a few memory problems causing BSODs so I am now wondering if I was blaming Outpost for BSODs earlier that had a different cause. I know when version 3 was released lots of people had BSOD problesm - have other people found this to be cured in the latest releases?

6338

General Software Discussion / Re: How necessary is a software firewall?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 06:20 PM »

Is is a lot less intrusive now as they have added automatic rules for well known applications.

6339

General Software Discussion / Re: How necessary is a software firewall?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 05:49 PM »

Once an application/virus/trojan/spyware or anything else is actually on your system then without a software firewall it can send anything it likes out of your system if you don't have a software firewall. That could be your credit card details or any other personal data stored on your system, plus it could use your own email client to spam other people. You may notice an increase in outgoing data but if malware is cunning enough it won't hog your internet connection enough for you to notice.

I am in the same situation (firewalled router hiding me from the outside world) but I always run a firewall that blocks outgoing traffic unless I authorise it, and logs packets that are arriving and being sent so that if something does get through I should know about it!

By the way - if your system is compromised by someone hijacking it to send out spam or porn then in some countries you are liable for that and you can be prosecuted! I think reasonable security attempts could be used to argue you did all that was possible to prevent it - no security could be seen as irresponsible behviour and make you liable. (I'm not a lawyer though!)

6340

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 12:27 PM »

Another one which has had good reviews (particularly for Pro work) is iView MediaPro 3 (tthere is an earlier version available for non-Pro use). Not cheap but looks interesting. If you are interested in pro digital photography there is currently an off at http://www.phaseone....iViewpromoFeb06.aspx for a "CaptureOne Pro and iView Media Pro" (if you are feeling rich).

6341

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 12:22 PM »

One thing I will say for iMatch is that the author is quick to respond to questions by email. I tried it a while back but somehow never felt comfortable with it and so didn't feel I could justify the price. If a discount could be negotiated I might give it another look. I had problems getting the software to read EXIF information in my digital photos (other software didn't seem to have any problem).

6342

Older Newsletters / Re: Newsletter for April 3, 2006 - Codename 'Happy Birthday to Us'

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 04:04 AM »

Average Hits per Day   263564.38

Wow --- ah but is it misleading .... I just thought is there anyway of excluding brotherS's Miranda recommendations ??

6343

Site/Forum Features / Re: Unsubscribing a topic...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 04:00 AM »

If that's what you want ...

6344

General Software Discussion / Re: Guitar Software

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 03:51 AM »

I'd suggest finding someone else who can play and give you a few tips to get started - you'll have more fun that way too!

6345

Older Newsletters / Re: Newsletter for April 3, 2006 - Codename 'Happy Birthday to Us'

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 03:49 AM »

Happy Birthday (belated ... oops) ...

Here is a card http://www.icq.com/f...rowse_page_18972.php

6346

Site/Forum Features / Re: Unsubscribing a topic...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 03:34 AM »

Not redundant - other's may not have noticed the link ...

6347

Living Room / Re: cool looking Lian Li Memorial 20th Anniversary computer case

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 03:29 AM »

That shape will have an interesting effect on cooling !

6348

Living Room / Re: Memory probs ... any ideas?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 03:26 AM »

i've had similar problems in the past. put two sticks of ram in a particular machine and whoops. take out a stick, it works. swap the sticks around, it works. swap the slots over, it works. put both sticks in another machine, it works. put back the two sticks in the awkward machine and whooops, blue screen when it feels like it.

there was a slight difference to your situation and that is neither stick displayed any errors when running ram tests using dos based scanning software. i just accepted it as just another of those weird pc problems that don't make any sense.

-nudone (April 04, 2006, 02:59 AM)

I hadn't noticed memtest errors before - but then I hadn't let it soak test for hours. This time I left it running and went off to do other things for a few hours - it was quite a long way down the line that errors started to occur - and seemed to be restricted to a very small memory range.

Maybe it is a power issue (though I have a beefy enough PSU). It can't be power spikes or 'dirty' mains power as I runn my system through a battery backed power unit that cleans the signal (it is relatively new so should be working OK).

The only other thing I can think is that it must be a heat issue - but I have two large fans spinning all the time and the overall temperature is well within a reasonable range.

6349

Living Room / Re: Memory probs ... any ideas?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 04, 2006, 03:21 AM »

You can test either DIMM in either slot and individually they work, but together they error?  That is way weird. I remember a time when you needed matched pairs of RAM, but that was back in the 586 days.

What are you using to test?  Is it possible the testing tool is busted?

-Rover (April 03, 2006, 07:01 PM)

Early DDR am cards needed to be matched (I am using an MSI 6380 K7T266Pro2-RU mobo which is getting a bit long in the tooth now but I don't really need to upgrade it - and need to try and cut back on my spending!). It is odd that I have had lots of problems with the two cards (they were even swapped by the manufacturer under warranty to a different memory chipset) and only recently stuck the second card in again - hey presto the BSODs started again. Unfortunately the mobo doesn't support EEC memory as that would be the obvious solution!!

I am using memtest86, which is pretty tried and tested.

BTW, I miss your skating girl   

Ah, that's because my Winter Olympic career is now on hold for 4 years ...

6350

Living Room / Memory probs ... any ideas?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on April 03, 2006, 06:40 PM »

I have been getting a lot of BSODs recently and began to wonder if it was a memory problem.

I ran a memory tester and it found some errors on one of my two memory cards (I had 2 x 512Mb DDR PC2100 cards in there).

The strange thing is if I put in either card by itself it tests fine, but if I put two in (in any slot combination) I seem to get errors.

I have just ordered a replacement 1Gb card (so that I only need one card installed) but wonder if anyone has any ideas how to fix the problem.

It doesn't seem to be a slot problem because I can move a single card around and it works fine!

All BIOS timings are set to conservative defaults.