Jan's Profile

Member since May 29, 2008

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  1. Review - Google Chrome for Windows

    0.2.149.27 Beta (Sep 2, 2008)

    A browser you will need to DEFINITELY keep an eye on.
    Lacks features and plugins? Hello! This is a beta!
    Memory usage bad? Check the built-in task manager to see what sites are eating up your memory - it's actually more memory efficient than Firefox.
    Safari rip-off? You, sir or madam, obviously know NOTHING about rendering engines or browsers - Google is actually one of the co-developers of the WebKit rendering engine that was spawned from KHTML...
    Usable but I'll have to rate it at a 4 in its current state since it needs further development.

    P.S. People whining about the EULA - download Chrome's source code and see what Google does with all the data etc. - it's OPEN SOURCE! Also, how can you expect a just released application to have hundreds of plugins? It HAS a plugin API but that needs time... Many people interpret moving tabs to the top of the window as a sign of reinventing the wheel - don't you understand that the real revolution here lies in the way all components of the browser are run in separate processes? Chrome never getting an Ad-Blocker? It's Open Source! HELLO! Google has no control over that! Write your own Ad-Blocker if you want to - the source code is public... Geez - some people shouldn't be allowed to write reviews before getting some facts first...

  2. Review - Launchy

    2.1.2 (Aug 7, 2008)

    I have a 32 bit system and since it's one of the very indispensable little programs for me I give it 5 out of 5 - I tried all other launchers I could find and Launchy is simply the best of the lot.

    @Jille: Launchy isn't a calculator... I think the 1/5 rating is for your inability to read...

  3. Review - FreeCommander

    2008.06a (Aug 5, 2008)

    @Metshrine: Xyplorer isn't actually much better than this and Directory Opus is a big pile of bloatware. I agree with Total Commander, however - I used it for years... Then again, these days Total Commander just doesn't have the looks I expect from modern software...

    I give it 5 stars because it's getting better with every version and becomes more and more feature-complete.

  4. Review - PerfectDisk Professional

    Service Pack 2 Build 52 (May 29, 2008)

    I've been using Diskeeper for quite a few years and only recently have I realized what a pile of bloatware and marketing bulls*** it has become - the biggest performance increase I've experienced for a long time was when I uninstalled it, especially since its defragmentation algorithms are quite bad (look at Executive Software's attempt at free space consolidation - meh).

    PerfectDisk is MUCH better as a disk defragmenter - some good thought has been put into its defragmentation algorithm and especially free space consolidation. Also, it doesn't have any on-the-fly defragmenters which usually slow down the system more than they are helping - you just need a proper file structure to minimize fragmentation, not 24/7 monitoring and PerfectDisk does that quite well.

    Somebody complained that it can't be scheduled to run more than once a day - what the heck? You'd have to be some paranoid defrag-freak to defragment your disk more than once a day - it'll ruin your HDD in no time and again proper free space consolidation helps if you constantly delete huge files.

    However, I still can't recommend PerfectDisk as the best defragger - it probably is the best commercial defragger but still has some issues.

    It installs unnecessary services, it is quite slow, can't run in Safe Mode, has a good defrag algorithm BUT only one variation of it, which might not be suitable for all kinds of disks/partitions (e.g. it's far better to sort files according to their last access time on your system partition).

    The best defrag overall, hands down, is JkDefrag. I use it for every-day maintenance. It has virtually no interface and configuration options at all (unless you get a third-party GUI or start it from the command line) BUT:

    - it is freeware
    - it is blazing fast
    - it isn't bloated with useless features (it's tiny!) - schedule it to run as you please with the Windows task scheduler
    - it doesn't even need to be installed
    - it comes with no less than 9 different defrag algorithms, one of which resembles the one found in PerfectDisk
    - it was written by a guy who has a deep understanding of how fragmentation works and how it affects your computer's performance (one look at the readme will tell you just that)

    Check it out!