Favorite Files

1. 7-Zip (32-bit)
2. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for Windows
3. AIMP
4. Audacity for Windows
5. Google Chrome for Windows
6. IrfanView
7. MediaMonkey
8. Opera for Windows
9. TagScanner
10. VirtualBox

Recent Posts

1. 
   Review - Google Chrome for Windows

   4.0.223.16 Beta (Nov 3, 2009)

   i do like chrome it starts in a sec, runs super quickly.
   
   Still got the most annoying Gmail bug though, I load Gmail and it instantly logs me out, log back in and instantly logged back out again.
   
   Very frustrating
   
   If it only had mouse gestures and was less memory hungry it would be virtually perfect

2. 
   Review - Drm-Removal

   3.9.3 (Nov 2, 2009)

   so it's not REALLY a drm removal tool just an audio transcoder? That's a bit disappointing to say the least. I can "transcode" drmed music just easily using the built in audio tools in windows, but I wouldn't, as the quality of transcoded music is NEVER going to be as good as the original.

3. 
   Review - Opera for Windows (Beta)

   10.10 Build 1848 Beta (Nov 2, 2009)

   I like Opera, I find myself switching between Opera & Chrome 4 a lot. Since the 10beta cycle I've used the mail client as well, something I never managed to do before. Using it as a desktop Gmail client it is great.
   Browsing is good, it's feature rich, right out of the box.
   
   Sadly it's still missing:
   easy way to integrate to delicious.com, STILL no real stumbleupon either.
   
   I'm yet to be convinced by the whole Opera Unite thing, to me, it just doesn't have a purpose or point... but I'd like to be proved wrong!
   
   Opera widgets was a terrible idea, and one they should ditch - they are rubbish and pointless and add nothing of value to the browser/email experience.
   
   The 10 cycle is no where near as fast as it used to be, and it does use lots more memory than before. Chrome is easily faster in every regard. Yet I do still keep coming back to it, it's faster than Firefox, it's very stable - even in the 10.10 betas. Other than a couple of bugs I find with Flickr.com (adding notes etc) I find it works on every other site I come across. It doesn't need boundless add-on like firefox - (some of the add-on for FF are brilliant mind you)
   
   Different people like different browsers - FF is good, Chrome is good, Arora is good (but instable), Opera is good. IE is terrible. Whatever your browser preference there are a lot of good alternatives to the terrible Internet Explorer.

4. 
   Review - Atlantis Word Processor

   1.6.4.3 Beta (Oct 30, 2009)

   Having looked at the mess of a UI (from the screenshot) I wasn't overly hopeful - seriously how to make a program look confusing - stick 1000 icons all over it.
   
   I installed it nonetheless.. erm, it was... well it was ok. Not terrible, but not that good either. OK I didnt' test it thoroughly, but to be honest that was because it's so damn fugly - it's really horrible to use. I found use it, even in basic form, just.. lacking.. somehow.
   
   If it was free, I'd say, ok, maybe it'd be worth hanging on to. But There are some pretty good freeware word processors already: Abiword, Openoffice (if you can stand the huge download) Heck, even wordpad is ok when there's nothing else.
   
   Openoffice, is significantly better than this, Abiword is too, and Abiword is also a lot lot easier to use also. Openoffice & Abiword are portable, so I really can't find a reason why I'd ever use this. It's not good, it's not free and there are cheaper and better alternatives out there.
   
   Sorry, to dis this, clearly there's a lot of work gone into it - but when there are good freeware apps out there shareware apps need to up their game and be significantly better. This, sadly, just isn't

5. 
   Review - Trillian Astra

   4.0.0.118 (Oct 29, 2009)

   if you have a monster amount of RAM, then maybe give this a go. Otherwise if you're not running with oodles of free RAM I'd give this a miss, it's very very memory heavy.
   
   After startup, connecting to 5 services it's showing up as using 70Mb+ - that's an awful lot of memory to just sit there waiting for an instant message to arrive.
   
   I thought pidgin was a bit resource heavy at 22Mb, but it's an absolutely lightweight by comparison.
   
   I'm afraid once I saw that usage I uninstalled quickly, I generally have lots of apps running and not a lot of free ram on my 2gb system is spare. I can't afford to waste it on memory heavy instant messenger.
   
   Shame, as it looks nice and I used to live old Trillian.

6. Comment - Nokia's N-Gage can't survive against iPhone, will be shut down

   4.0.0.118 (Oct 31, 2009 - 12:07 PM)

   the more I think about this article headline the more I too think - "what has the iphone got to do with anything"?
   
   Maybe one day mobile gaming will take off on phone handsets, but the iphone, palm pre, symbian, gizmondo, winMobile device just isn't there yet.

7. Comment - Nokia's N-Gage can't survive against iPhone, will be shut down

   4.0.0.118 (Oct 30, 2009 - 5:19 PM)

   that is NOT a suprise. the Nokia phones I've used and owned have been good phones, but awful gaming machines. they're just not games machine, they're not designed to be - they're phones.
   
   N-Gage was trying to shoehorn a gaming platform onto hardware that wasn't designed for it.
   
   Iphone games though.. jees, another platform NOT designed for games. marginally better than nokia in that the "buttons" and "d-pad" can be anywhere, but c'mon it's not a games machine either, no matter how you look at it, games on iPhone/iPod touch don't work that well with the touch screen and even less well with accelerometer.

8. Comment - Scrabulous case D-I-S-M-I-S-S-E-D

   4.0.0.118 (Dec 16, 2008 - 5:00 AM)

   sadly, they've changed the board (see above screenshot) from the old scrabble to this one, and added 8 letters not 7. It's not as good.

9. Comment - Scrabulous case D-I-S-M-I-S-S-E-D

   4.0.0.118 (Dec 16, 2008 - 5:00 AM)

   sadly, they've changed the board (see above screenshot) from the old scrabble to this one, and added 8 letters not 7. It's not as good.

10. Comment - Songbird 1.0 music player makes a landing

    4.0.0.118 (Dec 4, 2008 - 7:47 AM)

    there's a lot to like. I'm sure it will be an iTunes killer soon - lets face it, beating iTunes isn't that hard, just have an application that doesn't add loads of extra services, doesn't use excessive ram, push crap software at you and responds quickly to mouse clicks.
    
    on the downside, it has no modern iPod support, and it eats ram. when those two things are done, it could be brilliant.
    
    When I can use this instead of the goddawful iTunes I'll be happy