Mick's Profile

Member since February 13, 2005

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  1. Review - HTTrack Website Copier for Windows

    3.43 Beta 2 (Aug 26, 2008)

    Generally a good software.

    Unfortunately, it shares the same fate with majority of off-line browsers by being shut-out by many web-sites because it does a depth-first download instead of current document-first followed by depth. By doing depth-first the app randomly download items and will appear as a intruder/scanner/etc ... and many web-sites will shut you off.

  2. Review - Mozilla Firefox for Windows (v2)

    2.0.0.16 (Jul 23, 2008)

    Ever since ver 2+ firefox have been giving me problems with SVG graphics. It just plain refuse to display them when firefox 1.5 works beautifully.

  3. Review - Mozilla Firefox for Windows (v3)

    3.0 (Jul 2, 2008)

    Yes its overrated. There are more problems with v3 compared to v2x.

    It cannot save some web pages now as it keep waiting to grab photobucket linkes images etc. It should just ignore timeout files and continue to save the rest. Saving web pages now uses the download file control to save and causes current file transfer to abort in some situations when trying to save some "badly designed" web pages or pages that firefox cannot handle.

    They have now grabbed 10 (7 rows+2 line) rows of my bookmark dropdown list. Space is a premium on widescreen laptops!

    It has lost the ability to set min font size and therefore cannot be used to view some sites that uses very very small fonts. Why do they keep changing the plugin interface? Why does every version causes current plugins to fail?

    I am gonna back to v2....

  4. Review - Nero

    8.1.1.0b (Oct 11, 2007)

    I tried the 8.1.1.0 and theres more bloat than ever. There were lots of bugs and band-aid programming:-
    1. On one system it will not install at all - keeps complaining that the installation has been interrupted.
    2. It still sports old fashioned mentality/programming style - user should only be required to select files to burn and nero should tell user whether a cd or dvd is required. It does not make sense to first select a CD then select files and found we only have a spare DVD - start all over again?
    3. Why is it unable to dynamically swicth bethween cd and DVD discs? (at lease for data burning?)
    4. Why is secure disk palced in nero express and not main stream nero?
    5. There is no need to monopolize the whole PC screen during its operations.
    6. Messages are wrong - When its burning it should say "active" or "burning" and not "ready"
    7. I only want to pay for nero mainstream not the other bloats. Nero package should be sold in parts .
    8. Nero should stick to doing whats they do best - just data/video burning and not have photosnap, neroplayer etc

  5. Review - Vista Codec Package

    4.5.1 (Oct 11, 2007)

    This is great. I have used ffdshow xvid etc - they all install fine but for some reason they all have incorrect settings and winamp and media player does not play mp2 mpeg4 etc. In fact many settings in ffdshow are incorrect so the codec is useless to many players. Only this codec package solves the problem.

  6. Comment - Microsoft: Office Format War Over

    4.5.1 (Mar 6, 2007 - 11:08 PM)

    Typical of Microsoft - too much boasting and s/w does not work. After install, I tried to convert a word DOC to ODT format using save as. All Word did wa to pop up a message saying that I needed to install Word 2007 Filters first. Whats this? I have Word 2003 and the install program correctly detected it as Word 2003 and installs fine.

    Also, only ODT format is avail (but not working in Word). The Open spreadsheet, etc are NOT supported.

  7. Comment - Microsoft Hits 100 Million IE7 Installs

    4.5.1 (Jan 16, 2007 - 1:07 AM)

    Unfortunately I got IE7 forced down my throat! MS does it via security updates and refuses if I do not install IE7. majority of PC setup to allow automatic updats will get IE7 installed automatically. Your reporting is incorrect - you should break up the number of downloads into (A) Free & Willing user downloads and (B) Forced downloads.

    Making 100 million copies and giving it for free does not mean there will be 100 million users

  8. Comment - Seagate: The Hard Drive, Reconsidered

    4.5.1 (Nov 23, 2006 - 11:30 PM)

    George Orwell's "1984" has certainly lived up to its promise....here comes BIG BROTHER.

    The feature is good and bad. Good in that virus writers can be tracked down readily. Now Visual Studio 2005 etc already encrypts your CPU & HW info into the pseudo code already. With DRM and HDD serial no etc, we can pinpoint the PC on which each and every new virus was created on and travelled thru.

    The bad new is that this legitimizes "SPY ware" operations by the Big Guns RIAA etc. Everytime you play a tune (genuinely purchased) it would want to know which CPU HDD S/w ver it is being run and send info for "validation" which allows them to operate "legal spyware" - spying on your music/vide tastes etc...

    And why would it be cheaper? In fact such HDD will be more expensive as manufacturers will launch it as a premium HDD. So far RIAA etc have always insisted on this and that, but cost of the end product is always borned by the consumer. I don not see this being any different.