www.ninite.com will install pretty much all of these apps for you - with the irritating options disabled - and then allow you to quickly and easily update them with a single click. It's saved me hours!
Actually a very good article. I think a lot of people here are missing the point; you may use Google to find Amazon (lots of people I watch using the web do that rather than bookmark or type in an address to the address bar), but you use Amazon (or Orbitz etc.) to search for - and ultimately buy - a book, CD or whatever. When this happens, Google gets nothing (it actually pays for your use of it, albeit a fraction of a penny), whilst Amazon gets a healthy cut of the actual purchase.
This is Google's argument (and more importantly, it's fear); they simply become a pipe, rather than a destination. Like the mobile telcos fear of simply shifting low value data for Skype conversations, rather than high value point to point calls and texts. That's a slippery slope; who wants to be so reduced..?
Then tried searching for file types; it can't. I searched an indexed location on my PC the other day (using the more-or-less-undocumented-but-none-the-less-official method: type=) for an ISO and it flat out refused to find it. Even XP could do that...
... and I'd been using MapMyRun's app for ages as it integrated well with their web site; because of this, I didn't need to look for anything else. Until now. MapMyRun's app has recently been upgraded to an unusable level (it's truly awful now and has the feel of a poor web site rather than an actual app; really really terrible) so this review has made me aware of an alternative. Thank you El Reg.
Tut tut Gerhardt; you're attempting to be smutty. I'm sure you're well aware that Ardgay is not pronounced to rhyme with "gay"; correct local pronunciation rhymes it with "Hard Guy".
...mp3tunes.com. I've had around 120Gb uploaded with them (and growing) for years. Music is backed up (and easily redownloadable) and can be streamed to any client their open APIs support. It was set up by Michael Robertson who has already sold some tech to Google; could this be his next divestment?
Both the IE and Firfox versions are available in .msi format for automatic distribution via Group Policy; you need to sign up (free) to redistribute Flash player after which you get the full range of files offered to you.
Foxit are providing a free app and, if adding toolbars and shortcuts to it keeps it free and them in business, then we can't really complain; if you don't like it, don't use it (or untick the boxes - it's not that tough). On the other hand, if you use www.ninite.com to install your freeware (inc Foxit, AVG, FireFox et al et al) they very kindly strip out all the crap for you, giving you all the bits you want in one handy installer. Genius.
I was on a Continental flight a few years ago and all the way across the Atlantic, the in-flight entertainment system kept falling over and rebooting. At the time I got some blurry photos (god bless my original BlackBerry Pearl) of a curious penguin logo as the system attempted to come back to life. Thankfully only Linux crashed on that flight.
They have; you can. I've got over 120Gb in my locker and it didn't all get purchased from Amazon or iTunes... This service has been running for years - other than Apple finally allowing an app for it, it's not really news as such.
The legendary - and now largely crap - heavy metal mag bought kerrang.com from a squatter a few years back. He was a metal fan who bought it when he realised they hadn't; when they launched on the interwebs, he agreed to sell it to them for the very metal sum of £666.
Are you kidding? We're as bad on paper as in real life. For that analogy to work, you'd need an international team stuffed with top stars from the "greatest league in the world" but that consistently falls to pieces in every tournament it enters, failing to get anywhere near the potential it claims. As a Scot, I can't think of any teams that fit that description though...
The Vale opposite Queen Street Station in Glasgow was selling Guinness for £1.70 a pint for a portion of last year. Can't remember what it is now, but it's not £5, that's for sure...
Cracking wee pub it is too, but Queen St doesn't serve trains down to England I'm afraid.
We put in a LifeSize system here in the UK to speak to our colonial cousins in the US a couple of years ago. It wasn't cheap (£10k each end) but it works pretty well over ADSL though you'd be hard pressed to call it HD quality; having said that, the faster your link, the better it is. The benefit for us was IP meant no need for loads of concurrent international ISDN calls and the reduction in flights over the Atlantic so it's definitely paid for itself. YMMV...
I find that Startup Control Panel and Startup Monitor (both free) from mlin.net do best (if I can't be bothered formatting...). The first allows you to easily see what's in the various startup locations and allows you to delete / disable them (works pretty well for spyware as well as normal apps) and the latter tells you when some cheeky little piece of software is trying to implant itself in a startup location (I'm looking at you Itunes!) without telling you.
Five minutes work and you'll speed up your PC immediately, for free.
Oh, and I concur with the limewire comment; any PC I find with that on is usually needing nothing less than a wipe. OTOH, whenever I install FireFox and the user uses it, problems rarely arise.
Twenty years ago when I was at school (in the top half of the class, natch) my name was pretty much unique. Now it seems I'm at the bottom of the social pile and am nowt more than a chav. Oh well...
"As for people who say "I used to use Notes, I didn't like it, but I'll stick my fingers in my ears and say la la la rather than hear about the improvements"... they just sound a bit childish."
Isn't that the whole point of the article; whether or not the software is crap, the (potential) customers still associate it with its predecessors which really was. Change it's branding and they may just reassess those opinions...
IIRC, The Last Temptation of Christ is still banned in Inverness. If only there was some other way of watching a film not allowed to be shown in my local cinema...
What kinda saddo makes complaints about adverts being 55 minutes earlier than allowed?
Umm, the guy from Durex' PR company that got a bit pissed off that no-one was talking about their risque new advert and thought a quick call to the ASA might generate some free publicity?
Will this be in the bargain bins before or after Christmas? This is only any use for kids or promotional tat. An utterly crap idea; does anyone want to carry media disks or cards around with them again?
I've been a very happy MessageLabs customer for just under a year having escaped to them from a similar but truly woeful F-Prot service. The renewal invoice is sitting on my desk at the moment and is going to be very carefully considered. I've already been looking at Barracuda...
I think what's interesting here is that both of these flaws come about from Apple trying to improve the look, feel and convenience of the application. Exactly the problems that MS were rightly criticised for years ago. Have we not moved on?
I bought a 160Gb classic last year primarily for the storage; it's nearly full but as someone else mentioned, the sound quality is poor compared to other players.
Comparing the same mp3s (320kbps - hence why I need a 160Gb drive) on the ipod to my Archos 405 shows a massive difference, and when you factor in that I'm using the same headphones/car/home hi-fi for playback then, yes the comparison is valid.
The iPod interface is slick, the hardware is nice, iTunes sort of works and is excellent for synchronising music, but seriously, take a listen to the alternatives before buying an iPod. I only wish someone else had been offering a properly big HD when I bought my classic last year; and that Archos hadn't decided to charge for just about everything that they used to include for free...
Using OpenVPN for years with multiple users connecting from different connections all over the world easily and successfully.
The only problems we've come across are in the Far East - possibly latency as it can be a bit slow out there. Connections made in China seem to hardly ever work; can they block encrypted traffic? Unfortunately I never get sent to these places to find out...
Anyway, we use it 24/7 for shared folder, Exchange, intranet access et al over wifi, dialup and ethernet and as others have said, it just works. Excellent software.
I've been rolling out AVG on my LAN recently and coincidentally, my users have noticed a big slowdown in web access.
We share a (pretty slow but as good as we can get this far from the exchange) ADSL link and reading this, it's just dawning on me that AVG may be the reason for the problems; if one user hits Google and AVG goes off and downloads say, 10x as much as it normally would, then that's going to have an impact. As of this morning I've disabled Link Scanner across the network (good old AVG Admin Console - one click does the trick) to see if we get an improvement.
Judging by the comments, if I'm right, some of you will be glad that this is impacting AVG's paying customers just as much as webmasters!
(As an aside, whilst tracking this slowdown I've been watching my firewall graphs closely; we have a nightshift here and the spike in traffic whilst BBC are showing footy over iPlayer is huge. The other night, we maxed out from 8-10pm whilst last night, with the match on ITV everyone stopped surfing at 8ish, did a bit around half time then started again at 10. We have a TV in the canteen... Productivity will be monitored!)
I chose an AV440 a few years ago as it had the ability to play back audio and video as well as record and playback directly through the TV. Later on, I got an amazing bargain from my local Tesco when they accidentally marked down a newer 30gb model to £80 one day and would probably be interested in the new versions if they didn't now charge for codecs and the TV cradle. Archos seem to be a company either clawing desparately at revenue streams or interested only in ripping the piss out of their customers. £30 for a browser? Even Opera never tried that!
I arrived home from work one day to find my Tiscali broadband down. Thought nothing of it; and gave it a couple of hours but still nothing. Called Tiscali and asked them to investigate; no problems showing with your line sir - must be your end.
Having seen similar problems before, I asked him if perhaps my password changed; he wouldn't tell me what it was on their system, only that it ended with the letter s; no it doesn't! I got him to change it and voila my BB was working again. No sir, we haven't changed your password; aye right!
That was the final straw; after a year of low speeds and throttling. To their credit, they both texted and emailed me my MAC within a couple of hours of request. Supplied this to Be who soon had me smoothly connected at a far higher speed (9.5Mb of a claimed 24) with "unlimited" downloads for the same price. Don't know why I didn't do it sooner!
Every time I call I have to put up with someone that sounds like Anthea F***ing Turner on coke telling me that though she knows I'll be excited about the iPhone (I'm f***ing not) that I have to register at the web site not over the phone. Just put me through to someone I can shout at!!!
As when we used their AVES anti-spam system, it didn't block any of the pdf or the image based spam whatsoever. Complete waste of time and non-existent support. Thankfully using a better system now that just seems to work...
Register
54 posts • joined Friday 6th July 2007 12:28 GMT
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And how to install them?
www.ninite.com will install pretty much all of these apps for you - with the irritating options disabled - and then allow you to quickly and easily update them with a single click. It's saved me hours!
Aye right.
Edinbvrgh? Generous? You'll have had your TCP/IP then, more like...
That's amazing logic; so what you're saying is that a Bentley Continental is actually quite cheap if you use it "many"? Why didn't I think of that..?
I wonder if you use a cheap Android handset "many" does it represent even better value?
Actually a very good article. I think a lot of people here are missing the point; you may use Google to find Amazon (lots of people I watch using the web do that rather than bookmark or type in an address to the address bar), but you use Amazon (or Orbitz etc.) to search for - and ultimately buy - a book, CD or whatever. When this happens, Google gets nothing (it actually pays for your use of it, albeit a fraction of a penny), whilst Amazon gets a healthy cut of the actual purchase.
This is Google's argument (and more importantly, it's fear); they simply become a pipe, rather than a destination. Like the mobile telcos fear of simply shifting low value data for Skype conversations, rather than high value point to point calls and texts. That's a slippery slope; who wants to be so reduced..?
There is only one Forth Bridge
There is a Forth Road Bridge too. Please do not confuse them.
That is all.
I thought that too...
Then tried searching for file types; it can't. I searched an indexed location on my PC the other day (using the more-or-less-undocumented-but-none-the-less-official method: type=) for an ISO and it flat out refused to find it. Even XP could do that...
The future is rubbish.
I'm a tech-head who frequents the Reg
... and I'd been using MapMyRun's app for ages as it integrated well with their web site; because of this, I didn't need to look for anything else. Until now. MapMyRun's app has recently been upgraded to an unusable level (it's truly awful now and has the feel of a poor web site rather than an actual app; really really terrible) so this review has made me aware of an alternative. Thank you El Reg.
Tut tut;
Tut tut Gerhardt; you're attempting to be smutty. I'm sure you're well aware that Ardgay is not pronounced to rhyme with "gay"; correct local pronunciation rhymes it with "Hard Guy".
Cripes.
St Petersburg
Shortly to be twinned with the Sutherland town of Bonar Bridge?
http://tinyurl.com/6x4kfw5
Sounds like you need...
...mp3tunes.com. I've had around 120Gb uploaded with them (and growing) for years. Music is backed up (and easily redownloadable) and can be streamed to any client their open APIs support. It was set up by Michael Robertson who has already sold some tech to Google; could this be his next divestment?
Admins can use Group Policy
Both the IE and Firfox versions are available in .msi format for automatic distribution via Group Policy; you need to sign up (free) to redistribute Flash player after which you get the full range of files offered to you.
or...
You could just turn it off.
Nice, but...
Will either of them get on a flight with me?
Try this.
Foxit are providing a free app and, if adding toolbars and shortcuts to it keeps it free and them in business, then we can't really complain; if you don't like it, don't use it (or untick the boxes - it's not that tough). On the other hand, if you use www.ninite.com to install your freeware (inc Foxit, AVG, FireFox et al et al) they very kindly strip out all the crap for you, giving you all the bits you want in one handy installer. Genius.
It's not just Windows.
I was on a Continental flight a few years ago and all the way across the Atlantic, the in-flight entertainment system kept falling over and rebooting. At the time I got some blurry photos (god bless my original BlackBerry Pearl) of a curious penguin logo as the system attempted to come back to life. Thankfully only Linux crashed on that flight.
Stand by the phone Tom...
They have; you can. I've got over 120Gb in my locker and it didn't all get purchased from Amazon or iTunes... This service has been running for years - other than Apple finally allowing an app for it, it's not really news as such.
Kerrang!
The legendary - and now largely crap - heavy metal mag bought kerrang.com from a squatter a few years back. He was a metal fan who bought it when he realised they hadn't; when they launched on the interwebs, he agreed to sell it to them for the very metal sum of £666.
If you have to ask...
Scotland good on paper?
Are you kidding? We're as bad on paper as in real life. For that analogy to work, you'd need an international team stuffed with top stars from the "greatest league in the world" but that consistently falls to pieces in every tournament it enters, failing to get anywhere near the potential it claims. As a Scot, I can't think of any teams that fit that description though...
I thought...
Moby was a banned word on El Reg?
Cheap Guinness?
The Vale opposite Queen Street Station in Glasgow was selling Guinness for £1.70 a pint for a portion of last year. Can't remember what it is now, but it's not £5, that's for sure...
Cracking wee pub it is too, but Queen St doesn't serve trains down to England I'm afraid.
HD or not HD?
We put in a LifeSize system here in the UK to speak to our colonial cousins in the US a couple of years ago. It wasn't cheap (£10k each end) but it works pretty well over ADSL though you'd be hard pressed to call it HD quality; having said that, the faster your link, the better it is. The benefit for us was IP meant no need for loads of concurrent international ISDN calls and the reduction in flights over the Atlantic so it's definitely paid for itself. YMMV...
Mike Lin's your man...
I find that Startup Control Panel and Startup Monitor (both free) from mlin.net do best (if I can't be bothered formatting...). The first allows you to easily see what's in the various startup locations and allows you to delete / disable them (works pretty well for spyware as well as normal apps) and the latter tells you when some cheeky little piece of software is trying to implant itself in a startup location (I'm looking at you Itunes!) without telling you.
Five minutes work and you'll speed up your PC immediately, for free.
Oh, and I concur with the limewire comment; any PC I find with that on is usually needing nothing less than a wipe. OTOH, whenever I install FireFox and the user uses it, problems rarely arise.
Sliding down the social scale...
Twenty years ago when I was at school (in the top half of the class, natch) my name was pretty much unique. Now it seems I'm at the bottom of the social pile and am nowt more than a chav. Oh well...
@ Darren Adams
"As for people who say "I used to use Notes, I didn't like it, but I'll stick my fingers in my ears and say la la la rather than hear about the improvements"... they just sound a bit childish."
Isn't that the whole point of the article; whether or not the software is crap, the (potential) customers still associate it with its predecessors which really was. Change it's branding and they may just reassess those opinions...
Almaz?
Pure and simple; born in a world where love survives...
As Randy Crawford would say.
@nada
I saw Gene Simmons too! Does that mean he's dead?
They're not the only ones...
IIRC, The Last Temptation of Christ is still banned in Inverness. If only there was some other way of watching a film not allowed to be shown in my local cinema...
@Chris W
Thanks, I've just had it stuffed.
That's a surprise
I thought it was going to be a story about Ronan Keating with a headline like that.
@ everyone
What kinda saddo makes complaints about adverts being 55 minutes earlier than allowed?
Umm, the guy from Durex' PR company that got a bit pissed off that no-one was talking about their risque new advert and thought a quick call to the ASA might generate some free publicity?
Just a thought...
I thought The Onion was satire?
Bacon Good For You, Reports Best Scientist Ever:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31222
Only 1.5%?
Does that mean 98.5% of Windows 7 users are running FireFox or Opera?
Apostrophe schmapostrophe.
If Acocks Green, you've got bigger problems than punctuation.
My choice.
Can I get .cotton or .matrix please?
Bunch of arse.
Will this be in the bargain bins before or after Christmas? This is only any use for kids or promotional tat. An utterly crap idea; does anyone want to carry media disks or cards around with them again?
I couldn't decide...
Which was better - Licking Valley or Licking County. My Viz-sense was prickling and the FnarrFnarr-ometer went off the scale!
Oh cock.
I've been a very happy MessageLabs customer for just under a year having escaped to them from a similar but truly woeful F-Prot service. The renewal invoice is sitting on my desk at the moment and is going to be very carefully considered. I've already been looking at Barracuda...
Interesting pattern?
I think what's interesting here is that both of these flaws come about from Apple trying to improve the look, feel and convenience of the application. Exactly the problems that MS were rightly criticised for years ago. Have we not moved on?
* A title is required.
I believe that he knows the Sacred Art of Stealing...
iPod sound quality
I bought a 160Gb classic last year primarily for the storage; it's nearly full but as someone else mentioned, the sound quality is poor compared to other players.
Comparing the same mp3s (320kbps - hence why I need a 160Gb drive) on the ipod to my Archos 405 shows a massive difference, and when you factor in that I'm using the same headphones/car/home hi-fi for playback then, yes the comparison is valid.
The iPod interface is slick, the hardware is nice, iTunes sort of works and is excellent for synchronising music, but seriously, take a listen to the alternatives before buying an iPod. I only wish someone else had been offering a properly big HD when I bought my classic last year; and that Archos hadn't decided to charge for just about everything that they used to include for free...
Been...
Using OpenVPN for years with multiple users connecting from different connections all over the world easily and successfully.
The only problems we've come across are in the Far East - possibly latency as it can be a bit slow out there. Connections made in China seem to hardly ever work; can they block encrypted traffic? Unfortunately I never get sent to these places to find out...
Anyway, we use it 24/7 for shared folder, Exchange, intranet access et al over wifi, dialup and ethernet and as others have said, it just works. Excellent software.
Isn't that...
a future release of Ubuntu?
Sod Adobe Reader
Use Foxit Reader instead; it opens instantly...
On the other hand...
I've been rolling out AVG on my LAN recently and coincidentally, my users have noticed a big slowdown in web access.
We share a (pretty slow but as good as we can get this far from the exchange) ADSL link and reading this, it's just dawning on me that AVG may be the reason for the problems; if one user hits Google and AVG goes off and downloads say, 10x as much as it normally would, then that's going to have an impact. As of this morning I've disabled Link Scanner across the network (good old AVG Admin Console - one click does the trick) to see if we get an improvement.
Judging by the comments, if I'm right, some of you will be glad that this is impacting AVG's paying customers just as much as webmasters!
(As an aside, whilst tracking this slowdown I've been watching my firewall graphs closely; we have a nightshift here and the spike in traffic whilst BBC are showing footy over iPlayer is huge. The other night, we maxed out from 8-10pm whilst last night, with the match on ITV everyone stopped surfing at 8ish, did a bit around half time then started again at 10. We have a TV in the canteen... Productivity will be monitored!)
Archos have really gone downhill...
I chose an AV440 a few years ago as it had the ability to play back audio and video as well as record and playback directly through the TV. Later on, I got an amazing bargain from my local Tesco when they accidentally marked down a newer 30gb model to £80 one day and would probably be interested in the new versions if they didn't now charge for codecs and the TV cradle. Archos seem to be a company either clawing desparately at revenue streams or interested only in ripping the piss out of their customers. £30 for a browser? Even Opera never tried that!
Is it just me..?
Or has no-one else notice Core's CTO's name? Best name ever or just stating the bleeding obvious?
I was Tiscali'd
I arrived home from work one day to find my Tiscali broadband down. Thought nothing of it; and gave it a couple of hours but still nothing. Called Tiscali and asked them to investigate; no problems showing with your line sir - must be your end.
Having seen similar problems before, I asked him if perhaps my password changed; he wouldn't tell me what it was on their system, only that it ended with the letter s; no it doesn't! I got him to change it and voila my BB was working again. No sir, we haven't changed your password; aye right!
That was the final straw; after a year of low speeds and throttling. To their credit, they both texted and emailed me my MAC within a couple of hours of request. Supplied this to Be who soon had me smoothly connected at a far higher speed (9.5Mb of a claimed 24) with "unlimited" downloads for the same price. Don't know why I didn't do it sooner!
How about 02 do the same?
Every time I call I have to put up with someone that sounds like Anthea F***ing Turner on coke telling me that though she knows I'll be excited about the iPhone (I'm f***ing not) that I have to register at the web site not over the phone. Just put me through to someone I can shout at!!!
O'Leary's view?
Surely another revenue stream for Ryanair; tick here for Goat Sacrifice; £3 or £5 if you pay at the airport.
Ironic that this comes from F-Prot
As when we used their AVES anti-spam system, it didn't block any of the pdf or the image based spam whatsoever. Complete waste of time and non-existent support. Thankfully using a better system now that just seems to work...
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