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 - doubleTwist for Windows

   2.5.0.2312 Beta (Nov 10, 2009)

   nice idea, but hated it
   
   Pros: works with a lot of products & devices
   Cons: It mimics iTunes way too much, Runs a couple of services just like iTunes - a "helper service" and transcoding service - both of which sit there doing nothing most of the time but using about 25mb ram
   Application. nice - very itunes like, but without many of the features of iTunes - smart playlists etc. On startup the main app was using 145mb of ram, increasing to over 200mb when scanning my music library.
   Failed to find most of my artwork, despite most of my media have both a folder.jpg and the album art embedded in the file itself.
   Some strange search behaviour where I'd select an artist, it would only show me 1 album, and then only 1 or 2 tracks inside the album.
   
   There are a lot of these media managers and players and I don't know about his one, but I'm sick of them piggybacking on either ITunes or Windows media player because it means either of those are essential installs that you will never ever use directly if you use another media app.
   
   In the end, I uinstalled doubletwist (left lots of file behind after uninstall)
   
   I wouldn't use it again until they sort out the memory issues - a lot of people are still running 1Gb ram in xp or 2gb in Vista - having an single app using such a large chunk just to play music/videos is a little over the top in my opinion.
   Goog but not good enough just yet

2. 
   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

3. 
   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.

4. 
   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.

5. 
   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

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

   1.6.4.3 Beta (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

   1.6.4.3 Beta (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

   1.6.4.3 Beta (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

   1.6.4.3 Beta (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

    1.6.4.3 Beta (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