T's Profile

Member since October 5, 2006

  • Name

    T Durden

  • Location:

    United States of America

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Recent Posts

  1. Review - Mozilla Firefox for Windows (v3)

    3.0 Alpha 6 (Jul 31, 2007)

    Um, anyone care to comment on the product itself? Which is (ahem) Firefox 3 Alpha?

    Is it any good? Still too new? Any improvements/regrassions?

    Hello?

  2. Review - Mozilla Firefox for Windows (v2)

    2.0.0.6 (Jul 31, 2007)

    STUCK

    I remember when this puppy ran out of the starting gate with v1.0, and then with v1.5:

    It was sleek, slim, TONS faster than IE6, with useful features that many of us were just beginning to catch on to. I remember thinking to myself why hasn't everyone else caught on to that. And when Firefox slowly gained market share, I patted myself on the back for being an early adopter.

    Then came v2.0

    Since then, it has become a horrible resource hog. Many Firefox pundits have pointed out that most users nowadays should have PLENTY of memory installed to support it, but I've used it on PC's with 3gigs of RAM, and it still sticks.

    Other reviewers have mentioned that it feels "clunky". Strange, I know, but I can't think of a better word to describe it. CLUNKY.

    Also, I'd like to reply to Firefox supporters who say things like, "All you have to do is go into the *--* settings," or "Enter *--* value," etc...

    I have tried all of these. Firefox still drags. And even if these settings had worked, that's something that shouldn't be required of you. How much configuration does an application need? I've been hearing this one particular phrase tossed about alot lately... "It just works." I think this should be the aim of ALL software developers: that it works right the first time, every time.

    It may seem like I'm slamming Mozilla, but I've been a faithful Firefox user for over 2 years now. I love the extensions, search options, and RSS feeds. No other browser handles these things as well as Firefox. I'm just disappointed.

    I'm so addicted to these features that when my Firefox stalls, sticks, or freezes entirely, I'm forced to grin and bear it. But not everyone is willing to sacrifice as much for their "toys".

    And if this keeps up, I too may just move on.

  3. Review - Spyware Terminator

    2.0.0.165 Beta (Jul 30, 2007)

    It seems that most of the positive reviews for this app stem from 2 things:
    a) It's pretty.
    b) It's TeaTimer runs fast.

    However, these pale in comparison to SpywareTerminator's short-comings:

    1) It's TeaTimer DOES run fast.
    But can anyone verify that it actually FINDS anything? I know everyone's looking for a real-time scanner that does more harm than good, that scans well WITHOUT eating up more resources than the spyware it's supposed to prevent. I would like to see one, too.
    Unfortunately, this ain't it.

    2) The toolbar.
    For those of you who say that Crawler is no longer listed as a suspicious app, you need to read the threads at SpywareWarriors. It's a GREAT site, but admittedly, the navigation and graphics need some updating. When you find the forums I refer to, you'll see that although Crawler is no longer referred to as "BAD", they're still considered shady, and SW are keeping a close eye on ST.

    And this toolbar they've added? Not spyware? I heard it was subsequently removed (after SpywareWarriors refused to name them as "trustworthy" because of it), but still... shady.

    In all honestly, I haven't tried ST in a few months. I've already tried it 3 times in the past and wasn't impressed. And I haven't found anything new to make me want to give it another chance.

    I know what you guys are looking for. I want it, too. Unfortunately, there is no app on the market that has those features yet. But I believe we'll get better results waiting for "trusted" apps to release those features on their own, rather than risking our data to an obviously fake antispyware app.

  4. Review - FFDShow MPEG-4 Video Decoder

    20070710 rev1349 (Jul 26, 2007)

    @runningfool

    "...vlc and kmplayer already come with necessary codecs..."

    Yes, they do. Well... mostly. But what if you prefer another media player? Then you can play just about anything you want in the media player of your choice using these codecs. Although I think VLC is a very good player, I don't particularly like the way it associates itself to all of my video/audio files.

    "...which at the time came bundled with gator spyware. the spyware was eventually removed, and ffdshow morphed into an AIO decoding bundle."

    Also true. But even though DivX broke its ties to Gator, each new DivX package gets progressively more bloated. And this DOES affect performance in a big way.

    Perhaps the biggest problem with bloatware isn't so much the hard drive space it consumes (as price-per-gigabyte becomes ever so inexpensive), but the performance hit. These excessively large programs also like to take over your PC and become the "default" handler for every task you do that it can perform, whether it's the best choice for that particular function or not, which is frustrating AND annoying.

    It may seem like "fanboyism", but if that's the case, then count me as one of them. I've installed FFDShow (combined with MediaPlayer Classic) on literally dozens of clients PCs, and have received many happy customers in return.

    BTW, the latest betas have a new set of tray icons:
    http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/html/images/modern_icon_xp.png

    I've seen many different sites listed here, but to the best of my knowledge, these are the official ones:

    http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/
    http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/

  5. Review - Cabos for Windows

    0.7.3 (Jul 22, 2007)

    Just tested this NEW version (v0.7.3) this morning.

    At first, I couldn't see any immediate changes. So I checked the changelog.

    For those of you who have been using this app for a few months, two things will stand out like a sore thumb (once you know what to look for):

    * Improved network connection
    * Improved spam filter

    Cabos now connects to the Limewire networks in a matter of SECONDS. Previously, it could take a few minutes to connect, which was one of my very few gripes.

    Spam filtering is MUCH better, which seems to be the biggest complaint I get from customers who aren't as P2P savvy as the rest of us and accidentally download those "BuyCheapMP3" files.

    Keeps getting better and better. Nice!!