Recent Posts

6801

ProcessTamer / Re: Still having problems ... ignoring rules with full shutdown/reload of PT

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 14, 2005, 02:52 AM »

I have just updated the bug tracker - the new build of PT doesn't seem to solve the problem of not correctly updating behaviour when clicking OK in the config screen.

Eg. set process to ignore, put it manually to the process priority you want, click OK. PT immediately carries on taming the process as though you had not set up a rule.

6802

Living Room / Re: How much ram do you really need?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 14, 2005, 02:35 AM »

For normal desktop uses I think 512Mb is more than enough for most applications. It has been said that larger amounts of memory are not really used by many applictaions unless you have loads of apps loaded simulataneously. Disc speed, user interface and other system restrictions (like network access speeds) are usually the biggest impact on speed in most systems and large amounts of RAM or fast disks won't make much difference.

For things like gaming, video and photo editing (with premium programs like PhotoShop) 1Gb or more is useful as they will cache as much as possible in memory and so make processing faster.

6803

Post New Requests Here / Re: auto website loginer

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 13, 2005, 09:13 AM »

jjust went up to the morilla website and downloaded roboform, but itts not compatible with 1.5 -.- bleh, i guess i'll wait then. ooh, i'm so lazy XD

-cowcrombie (December 13, 2005, 08:09 AM)

I'm using RoboForm with Firefox 1.5 with no probs. Go to the RoboForm website and download the new Mozilla plugin.

6804

Living Room / Re: The Great Firewall Hunt ... frustrating ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 13, 2005, 02:45 AM »

CoreForce, which somebody else posted a link to somewhere on donationcoder.com, seems pretty interesting & powerful, and is free... http://force.coresecurity.com/

-f0dder (December 12, 2005, 08:18 PM)

Looks interesting, but does the Firewall protection have the depth of other products? Only asking 'cos I don't find the website terribly clear.

Also I can't find any reviews on the internet which suggests it is very much in the early stages. May well be worth watching though.

Not sure how their model works - how do they raise money if it is free to home and business users?

6805

Living Room / Re: The Great Firewall Hunt ... frustrating ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 12, 2005, 08:12 PM »

Note if anyone wants a copy of Sygate Personal Firewall (that was the free version) is is still available on TUCOWS at the moment, though I shouldn't imagine it will be there for much longer.

Try http://www.tucows.com/preview/213160

I'm not using it myself anymore but some people may be interested.

6806

Official Announcements / Re: Change to Official License Key Policy

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 12, 2005, 05:49 PM »

that's really sad - maybe the new policy will convince them to change that.

i do *not* think donationcoder.com apps qualify as nagware.  my understanding in general of nagware is that the program puts up a nag message on a regular basis (ie on every use) until you buy it.  that's not how donationcoder.com apps work.

you are only nagged to download a freeware key which last for 6 months, then you are told to get another after 6 months, then you are told once again at the 1 year period to go download a full non-expiring non-nagging license.  3 nags over period of 1 year and then never again doesn't seem to be too much of a burden i should hope.

-mouser (December 12, 2005, 11:13 AM)

I agree absolutely - maybe they have misinterpreted what is on offer. To me nag-ware means nagging you to buy something. I have tried a few apps before from one website (I won't mention names) that has free versions to download in the hope that you will think 'this is good maybe it is worth upgrading'. After using the 'free' software for more than 30 days it always asks on startup do you want to buy the full product. That is nag-ware. There is no way the DC software can be considered nag-ware.

Mouser why don't you contact them and point them at this thread ?

6807

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 12, 2005, 05:42 PM »

Some of the ATI graphics cards have dual monitor graphics as standard, and from what I have read the ATI monitor management software is excellent.

I have to agree with others on the Creative Soundcard options ... I am using an Audigy 2 ZX Platinum with 7.1 speakers and whilst it is OK it has never totally lived up to expectations. It is also frustrating that Creative drivers are always so bloated and often quite buggy. Add to that the somewhat limited ASIO drivers supplied and if I was buying again I would look elsewhere - particularly if you really are in to music, there are much better cards out there. Plus Creative cards are just as expensive as some of the more professional studio products.

Check out some of the cards on http://www.etcetera....+Cards+-&class=0 for some professional quality offerings.

6808

Living Room / Re: Can you grow cress in a keyboard?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 12, 2005, 10:40 AM »

LOL _ that's cool

6809

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 12, 2005, 10:34 AM »

Seagate do some really quiet drives ...

I have to confess I had a bad experience with Seagate - they released a batch of drives a few years back which were described as good for RAID setups but were completely useless (a RAID 0 was slower than the individual drives). All fairness to Seagate they owned up and gave replacements or refunds. At the time I opted for refunds and went for WD Caviar drives. In may ways I wish I had stayed with the Seagate option as they were lightening fast (as fast or faster than the Caviars) and almost silent.

Is run my system with SpeedFan running, and most of the time the only sound I get is the drive noise and the PSU noise. Having water cooling wouldn't affect these noise levels and I would say they are at least 90% of the overall sound. If I disable Speedfan (so I have 3 fans then at full speed) I notice a slight rise in noise level but not much.

6810

Activation/License/Language Help / Re: New License Key Page now online !

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 12, 2005, 09:26 AM »

Xara 3D and Xara Xtreme

I have Ulead's DVD MovieFactory

6811

Living Room / Re: nudone's new pc

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 12, 2005, 09:22 AM »

RAID 0 is faster if you need raw writing speed. Trouble is that disc access isn't usually the bottleneck it is usually other system operations and application speed.

To give you an idea - when I installed my current system I experimented with the RAID setup. I installed a clean version of Windows 2000 (I didn't have XP at the time) and nothing else. I then ran HD-Tach which is a disk benchmarking utility.

On pure write speed 2 drives in RAID 0 (stripe) ran at about 1.6 times the speed of the same drives run as standard IDE drives.

You can acheive a little faster but the theoretical maximaum of double speed isn't reachable because the RAID system iteslef has system overheads.

If you have more drives in the array you can theoretically acheive faster times, so 4 x 60Gb drives in a RAID 0 array should theoretically be much faster than 2 x 120Gb drives.

This is all assuming a hardware RAID system (not a software RAID which have less benefits).

This is great if you want to do things like video editing which needs fast writing, but really doesn't make much difference if you are simply installing Windows on the array.

If you use RAID 1 (mirroring) you won't see any speed improvement, in fact you may find the speed degraded slightly.

I haven't used SATA based interfaces yet but I'd guess the speed increase in SATA and the capacity and speed of  new drives would make RAID pretty much redundant as a technology unless you really need the extra speed and set up a SATA based array.

As for partitioning etc. you can do pretty much the same with a RAID 0 array as a standard disc - ie. partition it and install multiboot operating systems etc. As far as the computer you are using is concerned the array is a single drive.

A couple of other cautions - not all RAID interfaces are supported by Linux (if you want to use Linux) - at least not in a trivial setup manner.

Also I found that a combination of RAID arrays and standard drives in the same system have interesting effects on Windows when it tries to install. I found that even if RAID is set as the default boot device in the BIOS Windows still made its own assumptions about which should be the C drive. The way I got around this when I used to run Windows on the RAID array was to unplug the other drives during installation.

Nowadays I still use RAID 0 but just as a massive hard disk for writing video data quickly.

Good luck with the build ... I can see one day soon I am going to have to start upgrading again, but I think this time I will do it in a slow, piecemeal sort of fashion rather than spending a huge amount of money in one go.

6812

Living Room / Re: Your owned computer history/upgrade path

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 12, 2005, 07:48 AM »

I'm quite a bit more than 30 (though I don't feel it) ...

ZX80/Spectrum > BBC Micro B > Acorn RISC Machines (Archimeded and A5000) > Pentium 3 > Athlon 1600 (home built - current machine)

I have also been responsible for installation and user support of computer systems including networked PCs, Networked Macs and also various other standalone systems (Commodores/Apple IIs etc) and 2 minicomputers (each supporting 25+ users). I have also used Windows since version 2 (when it didn't do anything worthwhile) !!!

It has to be said though that my current system is more powerful than either of the two minis

I still maintain that Acorm RISC OS was the best and fatest system ever produced, and written in such a way that you could run multiple apps (including things like DTP) with a minimum of resources. My last system had 8Mb of RAM and a 120Mb hard disc. I still have the A5000 (sadly sitting in a box in the loft).

6813

Living Room / Re: Hacker can turn your home computer into a BOMB!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 12, 2005, 05:55 AM »

Reminds me rather of the "Freddie Star Ate My Hamster" headline ...

6814

Site/Forum Features / Re: International Donators - Do You Want Your Postcard from America?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 12, 2005, 03:31 AM »

Actually it would be nicer the other way around ...

How about us all sending you a postcard from where we live, and you make a postcard page on the website ? Then we could all share all of the postcards ...

The only issue I can perhaps see is copyright issues in the images.

6815

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com swag (shirts and stuff)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 11, 2005, 03:50 AM »

I thought it was a tasteful request ...

6816

General Software Discussion / Useful freebies from Splinterware

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 10, 2005, 06:53 PM »

I found this site because someone pointed me there for a replacement for Windows Task Scheduler (which I can't get to work properly).

All the programs on this site have free versions, and some have Pro versions with added functionality.

A couple of interesting ones are:

Launchkey - Command line tool to launch an application and send it keypresses. Useful to run from batch files or from other applications.

Clipboards - Trayicon utility to give you more than one Windows Clipboard. Switch easily between clipboards.

SystemScheduler works great and it much easier to use than Windows Task Scheduler (plus it has the benefit that it works!).

Go here for details: http://www.splinterware.com/index.htm

6817

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mp3 Bitrate At A Glance...MP3ext

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 10, 2005, 06:32 PM »

This is a great little tool ... thanks for pointing it out

6818

Older Newsletters / Re: Columnist Central

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 10, 2005, 06:17 PM »

Bum, I'm going to have to start thinking again <scratches head>

Oh well - it is a good idea though

6819

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder.com swag (shirts and stuff)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 10, 2005, 05:55 PM »

I want one of the thongs with "Donations Welcome" on it

6820

Living Room / Re: Ricky Gervais new audio show mp3 (from the british version of The Office)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 10, 2005, 09:19 AM »

thanks for the link Carol, i'll certainly subscribe to that.

any takers on the DVD i mentioned above? Carol? mouser? anyone else? i don't mind coughing up for the postage and disks - i'd just be happy knowing i've helped spread a little happiness.

-nudone (December 10, 2005, 08:31 AM)

Go on then, I'll PM you my address ;-)

6821

Living Room / Re: Ricky Gervais new audio show mp3 (from the british version of The Office)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 10, 2005, 07:34 AM »

I never really got The Office but I did really like Extras (recently on UK TV) ... that had me cringing behind the sofa at time as well as falling about in fits

By the way if you go to the main Guadian link Mouser gave you can subscribe to the series of shows as a podcast.

The podcast subscriptions URL is http://www.guardian....rickygervais/mp4.xml

or http://www.guardian....rickygervais/mp3.xml

6822

Living Room / Now Creative have shot themselves in the foot !!!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 09, 2005, 11:56 AM »

How about this article:

http://www.afterdawn...ews/archive/6790.cfm

I know it dates back to August but it is the first I have read about it.

6823

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

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 09, 2005, 11:55 AM »

I have bought Outpost now - but I will still check out the GS firewall. Thanks

6824

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Acronis 40% Christmas Discount

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 08, 2005, 11:09 AM »

Sorry about that - TI has jumped v. 8 ->9 , DD has jumped v. 9 -> 10

Interesting comment about the SATA Raid being compatible - I'm sure Acronis say they do not support RAID on their website (in either product). Mine is an onboard Promise FastTrak 100 IDE inteface, which is pretty standard out there (long in the tooth) so I would have thought it would be supported if they did.

In fact it says it supports RAID in DD 10, but doesn't say yes or no for TI 9.

What it does say is that TI 9 comes with two versions on the CD ROM one of which is Linux based (the full version) and the other is DOS based. The Linux based version is capable of supporting RAID (if the drivers load) but the DOS version isn't, so from my point of view TI 9 does not support RAID which is a bummer!!

I presume the DD 10 rescue disc will have the same problem - so again I can use it to manipulate RAID partitions but if something goes wrong I have no rescue facility. I bought DD to replace PartitionMagic which has been hit by the Symantec WORM (Was Originally Real Mean) and hasn't seen any development in a few years. Luckily PM 8 still supports the bits Acronis don't - which really says it all about Acronis development!!

6825

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Acronis 40% Christmas Discount

« Last post by Carol Haynes on December 08, 2005, 09:44 AM »

I think there are some issues with the Linux basis of their software. Certainly DiskDirector seemed happy resizing some of my Windows partitions (until I checked them with PartitionMagic which said the partition table was corrupted!). I haven't dared try version Acronis DD 10 doing that sort of thing.

The other thing I find disappointing is that they don't support any form of RAID setup, whereas other applications do. (I didn't find this out before I bought because my RAID hardware was BIOS disabled at the point I was checking out the evaluation). Ironically I think TrueImage 9 was more stable than version 10 and still is.

If anyone is interested the only things added since version 9 is a pretty useless file/folder based extra function. I have experimented with it and personally would prefer to use Windows Backup (which I wouldn't) or even WinZip. The other thing added was differential backups but these are very confusing and the documentation is extremely unclear on how it all works. I know what and how differential backups are supposed to work from other systems but the Acronis version seems to be a somewhat confusing adaptation of Incremental backups - I certainly get extra files with Differential backups which isn't supposed to happen, and restoring them seems a bit hit and miss.

Their recovery CDs won't even boot into full mode if you have a RAID array.

My take on their 'special offers' is that their sales have taken a bit of a hit over the release of TrueImage 10 which was truly awfull in its release state, and long time users uninstalled it rapidly and went back to version 9. Personally I think functions like backup generation and partition management should be tested to destruction before release over a long period of time - without rock solid confidence in the product the whole brand becomes a bit unreliable. Thier hearts are in the right place, but they are a bit too eager to get stuff out in the wild which will end in tears if they aren't careful.