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1. 
   Review - The Bat! Professional

   4.0.0.4 Alpha (Dec 28, 2007)

   Once again, The Bat team comes through - this time answering the losers who believe that a program has to LOOK fantastic be BE fantastic. Finally, the visual whiners can shut the hell up and enjoy this AMAZING email client. Worth every penny.

2. 
   Review - The Bat! Professional

   3.63.08 Beta (Dec 8, 2005)

   Every year I evaluate the latest email programs - always looking for the better deal. Despite the shortcomings of the development team as of late, nothing touches this program. People b**** about The Bat being bloated - Pocomail with its fat, bloated interface (I've also noticed it likes to spike the CPU when it checks mail) and lack of certain template features just didn't work out for me. Long live The Bat.

3. 
   Review - Paint Shop Pro

   X (Sep 7, 2005)

   I've been a PSP user since 3.12 and have found that it always exceeds my needs in quality, value, and features. Many people believe that PSP pretty much peaked out at V6 (and for many people - that's ALL you need). Granted, V7-9 were a lot LESS value for your upgrade money. I wasn't happen when Corel bought PSP - frankly I don't like Corel at all, and Things Change(tm) when a company you don't like gets ahold of product you love (see Adobe getting Cool Edit).
   
   Despite the GOOFY a** online activation BULLSH*T (its time for that trend to go away), Corel has given PSP a full facelift (not a bad thing - Joe Q. Consumer bases ALL their opinions on how things look - not how they work) and added something that's been needed for years - AUTOMATIC Red Eye fixing (none of this creepy fake eye stuff that you have to place the pupil yourself). The new learning center is dynamic and useful (esp. for the newbs). The footprint is still outrageous - but as previously mentioned, no 2 x 400MB swap files are required to run the program, so ... It starts up about the same speed at V9 does (meaning its still too slow) and processes things comparably. Is this worth buying again? Tough call .. if you're back on V6 or 7 - yeah, you might consider it. If you're new, looking for a little handholding and doing some digital photo touchups, you could do a lot worse. Otherwise, this is V9 reskinned from what I've played with thus far, and the online activation is totally annoying. If you're still looking for Deluxe Paint 4 for the PC, this isn't it (for those doing 2D gaming graphics, and the like - I SERIOUSLY recommend GRAPHICS GALE (http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/) - its as close to Dpaint as you're going to get folks).
   
   I look forward to taking PSPX out for more rides in the future.

4. 
   Review - Google Talk

   1.0.0.64 Beta (Aug 24, 2005)

   Let's be honest ... they are using Jabber, which is super cool, because Jabber clients (like the far superior designed Trillian Pro) can ALREADY connect to it out of the box. Smartly, Google embraced the community, instead of trying to shut it down. Good for them! This client is very thin and tight, which is good, but I'm not running more than one IM no matter how light the second one is. :)

5. 
   Review - SmartFTP (x86)

   1.5 Build 988 Beta (Jun 15, 2005)

   I've always found SmartFTP to be a reliable, feature packed product whose only downside was that they charge too much for it. Of course, competitive programs cost similar - but I think the product would be FAR more attractive in the $24.95 vein.
   
   A lot of people find problems with the interface, but frankly, after you get used to it - its far more efficient than most traditional FTP clients.
   
   While I use SmartFTP for 'heavy lifting' jobs (namely off hours bulk pushes of large hunks of data - a snap thanks to the Queue timer), I've found that the best way to do FTP is integrated into my file manager (Directory Opus www.dopus.com) which allows me to do far more via FTP than FTP clients do as it focuses on FILE MANAGEMENT (imagine mass renaming a bunch of files on your FTP server using RegEx - that's the power I'm talking about). I can even do scripted uploads which I cannot do with SmartFTP (and I guarentee Filezilla doesn't do it either, so pipe down :)
   
   SmartFTP is recommended for industrial work when you need it all. I dropped a star for the price tag.

6. Comment - Is Firefox hogging RAM? Memory Restart can fix that

   1.5 Build 988 Beta (Jul 6, 2011 - 11:53 AM)

   Gee, my Opera doesn't hit 500MB of memory usage ... Come to think of it, neither does my Chrome install ...
   
   Amazing what people will put up with instead of moving on. Restart your browser constantly? Run ANOTHER add-on that tells you that your add-ons are destroying your memory usage? What? Browse with Task Manager open?
   
   The old days of "Firefox 1z d4 1337z0r" is over. God bless Mozilla for coming up with something to get people off the IE teat, but there has been better alternatives for some time (yes, proud to be a die-hard Opera user - you don't need extensions when the out-of-the-box experience is rich; but that's another discussion).
   
   Time to let the legend die and move along. If you really want Mozilla to address their browser issues, then using a different product is the BEST way to send the signal.

7. Comment - Which web browser do you use?

   1.5 Build 988 Beta (Mar 10, 2011 - 9:31 AM)

   Home: Primary - Opera 11; Backup - Chrome 10. I love it's pure out of the box functionality. The screen zoom functionality beats every other browser hands down. Until Chrome, it had very little competition in the speed department.
   
   Work: Primary - Chrome 10; Backup - Firefox. Sure, I have to use IE 8 for intranet app development, but when I'm doing ANYTHING else, it's Chrome 10. The only reason I don't use Opera at work is some sort of a proxy server issue causes it to be slow.
   
   Mobile: Primary - Webkit (Android Froyo); Backup: Opera Mini. I really don't like third party browsers (even Opera) on my mobile devices. Opera's UI sucks a** (which is weird - since it is great on PC) and others (Skyfire, Dolphin, etc) are so bloated trying to be the "everything else" browsers.
   
   Notes: If Chrome would give me some UI flexibility (I MUCH prefer tabs on the BOTTOM of the screen as well as Opera's customization flexibility) and someone would replicate the Opera Notes feature perfectly, I'd seriously consider giving Opera up. The screen zooming is only so-so in Chrome, but if I could just get those two features, I might switch up.
   
   Truth be told - I'm a web developer. I have to have EVERY browser installed and usable to do testing. But, by using Opera - most of the time, if it runs under that level of compliance - it will run anywhere (aside from IE8 and below - that's ALWAYS a crapshoot).

8. Comment - 2011: Time for tech enthusiasts to act more charitably

   1.5 Build 988 Beta (Dec 27, 2010 - 5:33 PM)

   Well, as someone who is passionate about their technology, I can offer some explanation as to why some of us sound a bit more rabid than others.
   
   Some of us are sick of people believing what they are told and shown on TV; namely that there is only ONE product that can serve their needs and if they don't get it - that they will be somehow left out, never get laid, whatever.
   
   We want to show alternatives to iPods and iPads and iPhones (I'm picking on Apple, but this goes in many directions) - and people don't seem to want to listen unless you either imply it with a sledgehammer (there is your fanboyism) or show them a bullet point list comparing and contrasting why Product B can do EVERYTHING that Product C can do (and then some - which is the reviews and writeups this article complains about).
   
   People who are "in the know" technologically feel a DUTY to inform the "masses" or the "sheeople" that there are alternatives to the products mass-marketed on television and in advertising. We know the in's and out's of each product - and yeah, sure - based on that - we pick a side. Does that make it WRONG for us to try to push that side while Jobs and Balmer pump the TV and media full of their own propaganda? I guarantee - fanboys or not - we know more about BOTH products than "Joe Q. TVWatcher" - and we have reasons why WE chose to go the way we did.
   
   As the family "tech head", I often get the question "What do YOU use?" - you know, like asking your dentist what toothpaste he uses or the doctor what vitamins he takes. What's sad is - despite the endless checklists and reasons WHY I recommend Product B - it seems that Product A still manages to get the sale because people believe what they are told by the media.
   
   The whole thing is extremely frustrating to us - and if getting up on a soap box and chanting "ANDROID RULES!!!!" is what it takes to keep people off AT&T (heh) well then, I'm going to keep doing it.
   
   THAT is what *I* call charity.

9. Comment - Has Xbox 360 Already Won the War?

   1.5 Build 988 Beta (Dec 7, 2006 - 3:49 PM)

   Priceless. I just came back from Best Buy ... at LEAST 150 Xbox 360s LITTER the floor - dusty from not moving. I even saw a table of PS3s on the way in (and more than half of them were still there when I left). Strange, not a single Wii to be had.
   
   Let's say they really have SOLD 6 million - heck - even EIGHT million. It took them a year to do it. Let's say that all 4m of the Wii's sell before the end of the year; that's right - in a SINGLE month - and that's WITHOUT the killer app (which I have a feeling will be Star Wars Lightsaber Duels on the Wii). What does that say about how "Microsoft has won"?

10. Comment - Google Promotes Open Source OCR Library

    1.5 Build 988 Beta (Sep 6, 2006 - 9:57 AM)

    Hey .. Google ... if you REALLY want to foster this, you need to drop a Win32 out there, something with the quality of Picasa 2, that provides this functionality.
    
    Most users (you know, the people you probably REALLY want to target) have no use for your API.