Jack's Profile

Member since September 21, 2000

  • Name

    Jack Lestrade

  • Location:

    US

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Recent Posts

  1. Review - J. River Media Center

    6.0.141 (May 3, 2001)

    I've tried a ton of players, but just couldn't find one to replace Winamp. They were all too cumbersome, slow, or both. This is it -- Media Jukebox is great. In it's "mini-me" mode, it looks exactly like Winamp (even uses Winamp skins and plugins!), and it actually lets you sort by the track number from the ID3 tag (Winamp does not). It's database functions are better and much faster than RealJukeBox. It has a nice small memory footprint in mine-me mode. It's not perfect -- it could use more functions in mini-me mode, for example. However, I haven't seen a better all-around mp3 player and organizer, so it gets a five.

  2. Review - DiskState

    2.50 Beta 2 (Mar 9, 2001)

    I agree. This is a well done app and is totally unlike what Explorer does. The ability to print reports is cool. I wish people would try a program before they rate it, instead of just looking at the screen shot and flaming it. One thing I wish it had was the ability to resize the folder view dialogs.

  3. Review - PageLink

    3.0 Beta 5 (Jan 1, 2001)

    I tried it, and basically, this tool is designed to be used to leech files off the Napster network and does not share files. To me, that defeats the whole purpose of Napster -- sharing music. I don't like that idea very much. If everyone uses this and doesn't also run Napster to share, everyone loses.

    I couldn't see any serious advantage of using this instead of the Napster client anyways, other than it making less obvious you are leeching music.

    They have a perfect right to develop it, but I don't have to like it or support it.

  4. Review - Access Folders

    1.05 (Dec 22, 2000)

    This is a great time-saving program that is really useful if you're constantly visiting the same directories when you work. Tired of navigating to them in the Save As and Open dialog boxes? Access Folders will take you to them with 2 clicks.

    I've been waiting for someone to create a program that duplicated the basic function of Boomerang on the Macintosh (which has been out for many years), and this is it. Simple, but very effective.

    I give it a five if it had some more features, like the ability to re-order the items in the menu, add categories, or add menu separaters. That would make it really nice. There's a lot more they could do with it, but this is a great start.

  5. Review - PowerStrip

    2.75 (Sep 21, 2000)

    This is a really nice utility. The interface can be a little strange at first, and I've had it crash a few times under Win2K, but it has some features that I've seen nowhere else. I really like the gamma adjustment via hotkeys for game playing. It allows you to quickly change the brightness in Half-Life online games without having to quit and come back in. That alone makes it worthwhile. So says this "amature" that works in software development.

  6. Comment - StarOffice 6.0 Launch Garners Substantial Interest

    2.75 (Oct 10, 2001 - 3:48 AM)

    Alright, I found a better link to the MS support options for RETAIL customers. The site is confusing as hell. After more digging I found this: (the previous link was first and most obvious page I could find).

    http://support.microsoft...XP_Q&A_USAFinal.asp

    Apparently, for "personal" retail use, you can call and get a deal at $35 per incident. Apparently, installation issues are free, however, which is a plus, but you pay for long distance charges. If you want any help with "advanced" issues or 24x7 support, it's still $245 a pop. ouch.

    Even at $35 an incident, it's still more expensive than Sun's support. Sun also has 4-hour email support for $19.95 per incident.

  7. Comment - StarOffice 6.0 Launch Garners Substantial Interest

    2.75 (Oct 10, 2001 - 3:32 AM)

    I wondered about this myself, since I just downloaded StarOffice 6 to give it a try. Here's what I found out:

    StarOffice 5.2 Deluxe is $39.95 direct from Sun. I doubt 6.0 will be much more. http://www.sun.com/softw...5.2/get/buy.html#deluxe

    Office XP Pro is $579.00 list, $468.95 from Buy.com.
    http://www.us.buy.com/re...=14717&sku=20338645

    Sun has both free and low cost support options for StarOffice. There are free forums and FAQs, as well as phone support for $25 per incident, $17 if it's related to installation. At that rate, you could call 17 times before you'd get to the same price as Office XP sale price.

    If you buy Office XP, you get TWO incident calls for free, afterwards you pay **$245** per incident!! If you don't believe me, look here:
    http://support.microsoft...S&CT=SD&SE=NONA

    So don't belive this about making the difference up in support costs somehow.