Activity for September 16

Review - Mozilla Firefox Portable Edition
3.1 Beta 1 (Oct 15, 2008)

FF is a great browser, but memory use is very high. It was suppose to go down in v3 or v2, but it appears to me to be on the rise. As I type this, I see that peak memory use was at 122,344K and it is sitting at 111,825 right now. Aside of memory sucking, FF and Opera are the best. IE7 is good to have around though, as many sites still only work with IE. That's the way they code them.
Review - Lotus Symphony for Windows
1.1 (Sep 1, 2008)

Compared to OO Portable, the tabs for open spreadsheets is a plus. It seems to take longer to load on my computer than OO Portable, and for what I use it for mainly, the spreadsheets, I still prefer OO. You can pre-load into memory with Symphony, and it opens in about the same time frame as OO, but what's the use. The OO Portable is as fast without pre-loading for the initial spreadsheet to come up, then afterwards is the same speed as the Lotus using the optimized setting for 1GB of memory computers. I customized the OO toolbar the way I like it, find it attractive enough. Don't need Excel. Don't see how Symphony is all that much different looks wise, though as mentioned before, the tabs are nice.
Review - XnView for Windows
1.94.1 (Jul 27, 2008)

Almost a 5 star, but it did today, what it has done in the past = crash. Working with a lot of photos to get up on Flickr, it suddenly simply over loaded and crashed. I went back to using FastStone for viewing and doing editing. For just a few photos, or to do a lot of work on just one, I will still use XNview. Good app. other than the occasional crash.
Review - Mozilla Thunderbird Portable Edition
2.0.0.16 (Jul 26, 2008)

Very good email client. I use it for Gmail POP as well as for my ISP POP account. Uses a lot more RAM than say Windows Live Mail, but what the heck. Everything is saved in one folder and can be moved with ease into another computer or hard drive, should my current one fail me. I like the portables and have basically made the move to use as many as portables as possible. So many great free portable apps. now, it is amazing.
The Lightning Calendar for Thunderbird simply stopped working one day. I gave up on that one, though Sunbird Calendar seems to work fine. Seems like Sunbird is really RAM hungry however.
Review - Mozilla Firefox for Windows (v2)
2.0.0.16 (Jul 16, 2008)

FF3 works fine for me, with one exception. It can lose the sub folders in bookmarks. I have Opera, so I exported as HTML, all the bookmarks to a folder on Windows, then Imported the bookmarks and moved them to tool bar bookmarks. I work off the toolbar links.Once I got the bookmarks working, everything is fine. And there is Ad Block for FF3. That said, FF2 is also excellent. Only lagging browser, in my view, is the IE6 & 7.
Comment - Facebook's user base almost equal to entire US population
2.0.0.16 (Sep 16, 2009 - 12:01 PM)

300 million looking for their 15 minutes of fame? Are people lonely and looking for cyber friend? Better to join a club and meet in true face to face, when possible. Contacting in mass, I have email or a website to use. What am I missing here -- why would someone need Facebook? I guess one could find long lost friends, though how many other not so friendly are lurking online? I guess if simply matching names of those you know, and allow in is OK, though if anything like Chat, you will spend your life saying NO and NO Again.

Guess it would be a way of promoting yourself, as in getting a website known to the world. Considering how many websites there are already, it would be a lifetime of viewing. Guess I just don't get it. It is like Twittering and Cell Phone, day and night using -- WHO CARES what the heck you are doing? If the other person has half of a life to live, then they do not have the time to listen on your phone call or read text messages which ramble on about nothing. Do people in restaurants need to call someone to let them know they are eating the sandwich, it looks like it could rain outside, and they are going shopping for a new dress after lunch? This connected World is perhaps overly-so .
Comment - Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 beats IE8 in Microsoft's own load times test
2.0.0.16 (Apr 29, 2009 - 2:00 PM)

That is certainly fine and dandy, but the reason to use Firefox is that it does many other things better. You can choose the minimum font to display, and with Tab Mix Plus add-on, you can open a new tab for every click on of bookmarks, links, etc. There is simply a good long list of what is better with Firefox. Faster is but icing on the cake -- Go FF !!!
Comment - Code-frozen Firefox 3.5 beta gains 4% more speed against Chrome 2
2.0.0.16 (Apr 16, 2009 - 4:25 PM)

And in the end, does this all matter, if Firefox and Opera are so much easier to live with on a daily basis. Browsers, such as ie8, can not be set to use a font size specified as the minimal allowed size. Some may want for ad blocking, which FF has. Just a gazillion features which are better in FF or Opera over that of the competition. A little slower, you say --- so what???
Comment - IE8 loads pages faster, but not fast enough, in Microsoft test recreation
2.0.0.16 (Mar 26, 2009 - 1:36 AM)

OK, wonderful, but even if Firefox was slower than all the above, it still would be my pick. It simply does work, in everyday use, the way I want it to. I like the looks, love the add-ons, and it is compatible with most websites. Opera is very good, but it doesn't work well on some sites, so I always go back to FF. As for Chrome, I don't get it. What is suppose to be the big deal with that one? What Google did far better than the competition, IMHO, is the web-calendar -- OK, some other good stuff too. But the browser? I am staying with FF.
Comment - Can Mozilla escape a premature endgame for Firefox?
2.0.0.16 (Mar 22, 2009 - 1:19 AM)

All I can say is to just try each one of the browsers. I bet most people will choose Firefox. Does Chrome or IE allow you to choose the minimum font which can display? I love that feature in Firefox and Opera. I have not idea, after trying our Chrome, why it is suppose to be superior. Guess I would choose it over say ie7 or ie8. The list of features which are truly useful is long with Firefox, and for that matter, Opera as well. Both are just so much slicker to use everyday, than are the rest. Firefox3 for me, or Portable Firefox3, with the Chromifox 1.0 theme-lookin' good!