Activity for December 19

Review - Opera for Windows
12.00.1211 Beta (Dec 19, 2011)

Once again, Betanews comes in late to the party.

After trying, unsuccessfully, to install this on my older machine, which runs Vista, I went to the site to see that the latest revision [build 1213] is up, and note from a few people running Vista about the problems with the 1211 build. Since I had checked this morning at around 2 AM PST for a newer build, Betanews must have gotten a build that was only up for minutes, being quickly supplanted by 1213. Build 1213 works fine thus far, with the major point being that its installer works to completion on my machine. This is an example of how quickly the dev team responds, and how quickly problems are taken care of.

For the very few minutes I have had it working, I see nothing wrong, beyond the glitches with the minimize, maximize, and close buttons, which has already been noted, and a long term solution worked on. Since this is an alpha, not a beta [noted before download that it is a snapshot!!!] and it does most that I've tried perfectly, with the problems noted on their way to repair as I write this - 5 stars for build 1213.

BTW, the hardware acceleration really is working, however, it is not as tuned as what I experience with the hardware acceleration on Chrome. It will come with time. This is an alpha, and nowhere close to as ragged as some of the Chrome betas [I've never run the Canary builds, so can't comment on those.]
Review - CCEnhancer
2.5 (Dec 14, 2011)

This is a nice program, but it needs to not remove previous additions automatically. There is a method of removing customizations as part of the setup, but it is superfluous, as all customizations are removed whenever this is executed.

Be careful to back up what you have, because if you don't, it will be gone after this runs. Poor programming. Idea gets 5 stars, execution drops it to 3.
Review - Opera for Windows
11.60 (Dec 6, 2011)

Been using it constantly for about 5 hours this A.M. This is a good stepping stone, and many small bugs have been fixed, but is not what those of us in the Opera community are looking for. That remains a part of the revision 12 release. For Opera lovers, a must have, for others, a good introduction, but not necessarily a huge difference from the last three incremental releases.
Review - Opera for Windows
11.60 Build 1180 Beta (Dec 2, 2011)

11.60 build 1180, which is not a beta as the download link on the main page says, but a Release Candidate. The last two betas have been trouble free for me, so this might follow the Opera ritual of actually being the GOLD release.

Speed improvements, on a machine running Vista on an old Athlon XP processor, so they really show! Mail improvements, usability and interface.

Somewhere during this beta cycle, the change was made to enlarge the opened window, by default, for looking at the downloadable skins for Opera. A great improvement.

No GPU acceleration yet, promised to be coming soon. By the way, Opera is faster on this machine than Chrome or any of its derivatives, due to the fact that it is single CPU. Not many are still on single CPU these days, but it is something to consider. Besides, the UI of Opera is the best available!! [5 stars thus far, with no problems perceived on the RC]
Review - IObit Smart Defrag
2.2.0.1113 (Aug 25, 2011)

Simply adequate, with due consideration of the price. Auslogics defrag program, also free, has more speed, using less resources, with less slowing of the computer. The only thing Auslogics will not do is a boot time defrag, which you can use Page Defrag, from SysInternals for, letting Auslogics take over while the machine has the GUI running.
Comment - Is Windows 8's app store better late than never?
2.2.0.1113 (Aug 18, 2011 - 3:21 PM)

Prepare to downvote, because this is about the stupidest "me, too!" idea MickeySoft has ever come up with. Besides looking as though they can't come up with anything original, it is superfluous, because all the sheeple already have their Macs, with the iTunes and all the other "I am too stupid, lazy, or busy to take a moment from my inconsequential life to do an actual install" features.

People ask for this and then wonder why the control is out of their hands, and why the machines will not do what they want them to. This is the answer to that question.

And while I'm at it, not everyone is stupid enough to buy into "the cloud" - Office 364 [365 minus one day of no use in less than a year] should have convinced a few more.
Comment - Thunderbird 6 arrives, but was it too fast?
2.2.0.1113 (Aug 17, 2011 - 11:15 PM)

I like Mozilla products as much as the next guy, but only insofar as they suit my needs. Thunderbird since version 3 is more difficult to set up and get working well than Outlook - and they wonder why Microsoft owns the market, for those who don't use web-interface mail.

Also, many of the "add-ons" simply don't work. If they don't work, they should be weeded out, or designated useless on newer versions, and categorized that way.

For most people, Pegasus is free, much more efficient, and less annoying.
Comment - Thunderbird 6 arrives, but was it too fast?
2.2.0.1113 (Aug 17, 2011 - 11:11 PM)

It's the new buzzword, describing an almost totally useless feature...
Comment - Office 365 becomes Office 364 with Wednesday outage
2.2.0.1113 (Aug 17, 2011 - 7:54 PM)

If I was trying to be funny, I could state many things over the past 20+ years that Microsoft has screwed the pooch on, but instead I'll just say that, like many other things these days, there simply is not enough redundancy.
Comment - Crimey, I can watch Netflix on Chromebook
2.2.0.1113 (Aug 12, 2011 - 11:41 AM)

Not too subtle, too arcane.