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I've not been happy with Macrium Reflect Free, and perhaps their paid versions..
superboyac:
peter.s...you're comment on drive hubs caught my eye. I think I have to agree with you. I have found hubs to often cause problems with hard drives. I've had several situations where I had an extenral hub working fine on one computer, and when I moved it to another, a lot of the data got corrupted. In these situations, there were a variety of issues at play. One problem was the reliability of different connectors, like esata vs. usb 3.0. Also a problem are drives larger than 2 TB, depending on the machine you are connecting to. I've had problems where the drive connects/disconnects while large transfers are taking place.
I just got one of those docking stations to try, you know the dual duplicator type. I wonder how reliable it will be. It had good reviews, but my trust in them is only so so. This one I'm trying is from Inateck.
Anyway, I'm always a little timid when it comes to these external hubs.
The one I've been using that I like best is from Datoptic (recommended here). It has also had issues, but I think it more had to do with the machine and large drive than the datoptic enclosure.
wraith808:
Ath, you are a "supporting member", whatever that means in dollars; my AHK intro alone did get almost 14,000 reads, and is third on Google for "autohotkey tutorial", so we can assume 12,000 or more hits on that came from the outside, i.e. I, here and there, bring quite some "traffic" and "coverage" to this forum. "Too long - didn't read" - perfect, but then, isn't there good practice to only be allowed to write wherever you first will have done some reading, to begin with?
I'm worth more than your possible 5 "supporting" crap dollars, Ath, so refrain from worthless meta communications and get back to our basics, which is about sharing experience, insight and ideas. And if you're up to spread fascism, outlinersoftware.com would be your ideal forum.
Tomos, "but the thread seems to be already fairly off-topic" - what did you mean? A thread originally about MR, and which then originated much more valid info, of which in part I'm thankful, and which in part I contributed myself? No problem, right?
Or did you want to express that I should not have created this thread to begin with, and/or should not have been ALLOWED to create this thread, i.e. it being off-topic for this forum? Whatever, from Ath's post citing yours, you very well see how dangerous it is to not speak plain English and hope people will CORRECTLY read between your lines.
Anyway, "the rewritten title" is not correct, "a rewritten title" might be subject to discussion in case.
-peter.s (February 16, 2015, 12:02 PM)
--- End quote ---
That's a bit... less about the way that this community is structured, i.e. direct attacks aren't really a thing here. Your opinion is of course yours to say whatever with... as is his. But attacking the messenger is definitely a no-no around here. Structure your arguments to support your point, and let your content speak for itself.
And if you're talking about the relative use of what is 'normal' to see the value of content... that doesn't really fly around here. 14k hits... for what? No ads, no redirects, struggles to keep the lights on because of that lack. Everyone is considered equally valuable around here. And any titles are for a thanks for help more than a value statement of their membership.
(an other vein... it seems rather strange that you became so vitriolic, when they were talking about steven's post, not yours)
mouser:
ditto what wraith said.
peter.s:
superboyac,
Thank you for the confirmation. My first "expensive" (as said, 30 euro instead of the usual 5 or 6, not 200) hub was unreliable, BEFORE my stupid continuing by lightning and thunder, and my second one is unreliable, too
(just today, my mouse stopped working, worked again switched to the comp directly, stopped working when switched to the hub, works fine again since switched to the comp now: Now imagine this with usb sticks or worse, with external hdd's...),
but as said, with some lightning-and-thunder experience of my hardware, so I'm not really in my right to blame hardware for any hardware probs I might have.
As for your Datoptic recommendation, Continental Europa is treated like third world, and I often read reviews of hardware in the usual U.S. technics' review site, which is simply not available in Europe, and which will never even become available in Europe: Some (= several) hardware, of big interest for me, had fine reviews years ago, and now is defunct, respectively (= as said, several such occasions, not just one), i.e. not even available in the States anymore, and without ever having been imported into Europe in-between.
This is true for hardware with exotic functionality, i.e. special laptops, or special usb laptop screens (of which only some less interesting makes had made it to the Continent, before becoming unavailable, too), but especially, this is true for accessories of all sorts, and my personal conclusions from what I've seen in this respect is perhaps a little bit out-of-the-way but not entirely illogical:
In fact, I seriously assume that for accessories and such, it's the LESSER-quality things that get imported to Europe by preference (and no Datoptic hub, "of course"). At first sight, this would seem devoid of sense, but it is not: Importers ain't interested in quality, but in profit margin, and so it's quite natural even, on second thought, that crap "imports" much easier than quality stuff:
You've got some quality stuff which would cost the importer 15 euro (incl. VAT on importion; any further margin incl. about 20 p.c. of additional VAT on that margin (that's why it's called "value ADDED tax" as we all know), too). He resells it to some sellers, for 25 (= not enough margin if you ask him); they sell it for 35 (= not enough margin if you ask them); of course, for quality stuff, SOME users (me included) would be willing to pay 50 euro, but it's obvious that at 50 euro, sales numbers would fall to perhaps 30 p.c. (or even less) of what they are at 30 euro.
Now for some crap. Cost for the importer, vat included, 8 euro. We poor "end-users" then pay 30 euro plus postage for that crap, and importer and reseller have got their margins... AND their numbers.
And this explains a lot, as for what we have to live with, over here. (The irony being that more than just some of this stuff is not even built in the U.S., but in China... but even then, the same rule applies. Cf. Apple products / iPhone and their respective sale prices in the U.S. and in Europe: As said, we're treated like we liked to treat the Third World in the Fifties...)
wraith808 and mouser,
I'm not into unnecessary fights, and it's probably a big miunderstanding, not only about which user's post Ath's post was. Cf. current FF thread.
First, and because of my style, I've got enemies, over here, perhaps less so, but in particular over there, and some users read and/or post here and there. It's not only one user who I could identify, it's also some more user(s) writing here and there, and which I could NOT yet "identify" (= in the sense of knowing this avatar here is that avatar there), and such a situation triggers paranoid (over-) reaction to some point.
Most readers from there will also read here, whilst only a minority of here's readers will also read over there I suppose, that's why I take the liberty to explain in 1, 2 sentences: World-wide, there is nobody who writes about outliner theory as I do, and far from it; I'm not alleging by that that I'm some unique "outliner thinker" or such, but then, other "outliner theoreticians" have ceased to publish their findings or musings years ago, i.e. in some cases, their respective blogs always exist, but with newest entry in 2010 or even former.
Now instead of doing some inspiring discussing over there, on that ONLY available specialized outliner forum, or then, instead of reading-or-not-reading my posts, some fascist assholes (I say it like it this, since their speciality is acclaim others when they start the stoning-of-the-month, and that's exactly Middle Ages fascism) over there attack me again and again, on a purely meta-communication basis, i.e. never ever some argument re facts/argumentation, but always in the line of "forum owner, please silence that asshole for good"; it's very intriguing (or how could I say that better?) that some of the users over there claim to have highest-brow professions, e.g. they pretend to be university professors, a profession I take in high respect, but at the same time, their "contributions" over there are totally devoid of any intelligence whatsoever, i.e. in 5, 6 or 7 years such self-proclaimed "university professors" did not publish a single smart idea - not one, in so many years - over there ("wsp" being a blatant example, among others with albeit lesser pretensions re their professed background). (The same cannot be said of this forum, where there's a good mix of easy-going things and more valuable insight graciously being shared.)
The culmination point in this fact-free permanent slander has been reached just some 2 weeks ago when some asshole over there dared tell me I had "obviously not thought much about outliners" (citing from memory), whilst just my posts in that forum (except for them being deleted by that forum's owner, but that he didn't do yet) easily belie that person. Thus, not only my developments (borne, as said, from my own outliner in the Nineties, some 70k of code lines) are met with silence (no problem), but people openly declare them non-existent.
So this is the background of my hyper-sensitiveness when it comes to people saying - perhaps even inadvertently - a thread of mine is "OT", i.e. should not even have been published to begin with. (Cf. funny cat pics in a programmers' and sw users' forum - you know I accepted these being OT.) Perhaps even they did NOT say it, but it was just me that READ that INTO it:
As for the "OT", please read again, above:
"^ I was going to say quite off-topic *and* well worth a new thread, but the thread seems to be already fairly off-topic
+1, combined with the rewritten title and small-essay size post made me TL;DR; (again) huh"
As implied above, I'm beyond any acceptance of such "+1" when it comes to requests to silence me or sayings that I should not have mentioned some subject (length criticism being another story). But tomos is a non-native speaker, as I am, and it all was a language problem (again, with the above, totally unbearable outliner forum background and non-knowing who are those "doubly-writers" there and here):
In correct English, it should very probably have read, "but the thread seems to have gone [and not: to be] already fairly off-topic" - the "already" should have told me better, but in light of the above, I overlooked that in spite of re-reading it thrice - I'm verry sorry ; obviously, from my outliner forum experience and from some people furtively writing there and here, I now see "enemies" where there are none.
Now for the "bringing in traffic".
As said, I had understood you in the line of "your thread should not have been created in the first place". Then for the absence of advertizing. Now let's get serious, please.
The very first element to advertizing is traffic: done. Second point to consider: qualified traffic. Do we need to discuss this, for DC? There are not THAT many such fora in the web, just some "general pc help" fora, and then those "technics" sites, often offsprings from pc magazines: No pc experience sharing.
I don't know what percentage of readers here do also write here, to some notable extent, but I bet you've (/ dare I say, we've?) got a LOT of readers, and they certainly come back with some regularity, because of the non-irrelevancy of our posts.
So what? Can't we all grasp that all prerequisites for good advertizing revenue are present? Or is general traffic only so-so? But why then is DC very high in google's list for every subject that's treated here? mouser, why not start a thread giving some statistics out? Thus, I convene, you first would need some figures, then only we could start discussing if it's worthwile to try to up those numbers, and in case, how to do that. Your next step would be, identify competing ad prices: How much "coverage" sw developers and such would get here, by advertizing here, and at which cost? In other words: Is DC's reach to small so that advertisers would either to have too high ad prices, or that advertising revenues would stay minimal anyway (i.e. by applying prices in accordance with alleged "minimal" reach)?
Then, there are some sites getting money from bringing in contact developers and customers; some such sites do make TOO much money from this, so there should be some possibilities in that, too: There's some room for a site that would take its share if that's a more decent share.
You know, this reminds me of AHK's problem: Just some months ago, AHK_L top developer / admin said, "I've got better things to do than to work for free, upon your making money with AHK" (citing from memory again). Background was, for the xth time, AHK not allowing to scramble its code (just obfuscate it), and worse, AHK_L .exes now showing off the source code openly, without any de-"assembling" needed anymore.
Fact is, it would have been all so simple, and always could be: Have it free for own use and for everything you give away; collect some fee for anything that's sold... but make it as difficult as it possibly gets to steal your code. (I would have been happy to pay for AHK for some years now if I had had the chance to sell some macros; cf. many AHK programlets being given away by some fellow DC contributors: Selling or giving out should be your choice.)
Or this one: We all know developers leave a whopping 50 p.c. fee at bits, from the reduced price they have to grant in order to get impulse buys: original price 80 bucks, bit price 40 bucks, developer gets 20 bucks - well, he'll be happy to get 19 in fact (and more realistically, some 18.30 or something) since his payment processor will get some money, too.
Now, just thinking: Original price 80 bucks, DC price 52 bucks, payment processor gets 42 bucks (10 for DC), developer gets more than 40 bucks, which is quite some more money than 18.30 - win win for everybody (except for bits, which would get less developers piling up their programs for them).
In a word, DC seems to have real good "coverage" (tremendously good google results for as said almost everything), but as for now, it doesn't do anything about even just trying to "commercialize" this value, the irony being most people in the web being willing to do anything to get just a little fraction of DC's seo value.
Thus, the question should not be, what to do with unwanted traffic that just costs hosting fees, but obviously should be, how to capitalize on that traffic (and optimize it further, and so on).
And now, I'm going to delete my above post.
tomos:
So this is the background of my hyper-sensitiveness when it comes to people saying - perhaps even inadvertently - a thread of mine is "OT", i.e. should not even have been published to begin with. (Cf. funny cat pics in a programmers' and sw users' forum - you know I accepted these being OT.) Perhaps even they did NOT say it, but it was just me that READ that INTO it:
As for the "OT", please read again, above:
"^ I was going to say quite off-topic *and* well worth a new thread, but the thread seems to be already fairly off-topic
+1, combined with the rewritten title and small-essay size post made me TL;DR; (again) huh"
As implied above, I'm beyond any acceptance of such "+1" when it comes to requests to silence me or sayings that I should not have mentioned some subject (length criticism being another story). But tomos is a non-native speaker, as I am, and it all was a language problem (again, with the above, totally unbearable outliner forum background and non-knowing who are those "doubly-writers" there and here):
In correct English, it should very probably have read, "but the thread seems to have gone [and not: to be] already fairly off-topic" - the "already" should have told me better, but in light of the above, I overlooked that in spite of re-reading it thrice - I'm verry sorry ; obviously, from my outliner forum experience and from some people furtively writing there and here, I now see "enemies" where there are none.
-peter.s (February 16, 2015, 04:21 PM)
--- End quote ---
Hi Peter,
I am a native (English) speaker, but I was careless with my words there: as you speculated, what I wrote should have read:
the thread has already gone off-topic.
In my defense and OTOH the other interpretation makes no sense: to say that a whole thread is off-topic is meaningless - so construing it as an attack on you + your thead is the last thing I would have expected.
Sincere apologies for any misunderstanding!
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