Software

Office 2010, early impressions

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , ,

I’ve mentioned several times that I hadn’t seen Office 2010 yet, so I couldn’t comment on it, and would reserve judgment until I’ve seen it. I’ve been working for companies that were a bit behind the times on that.

I’ve been working with it for a week now. I won’t be buying it for my own use at home.

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It’s 6:21 PM. Do you know what the current version of Firefox is?

Dave Farquhar Software , , ,

Veteran blogger John Dominik reported yesterday that upgrading to Firefox 13 fixed some problems for him. So of course he’ll be thrilled to know that Firefox released a new version the very next day. The. Very. Next. Day.

From a security standpoint, there are two things to like about the new version.

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Amiga on x86

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing, Software , ,

Re-implementing Amiga OS on cheap, commodity x86 hardware always made sense, so I’m not surprised that someone is doing it. Mostly I’m surprised that it took me this long to find it.

Am I interested? You bet. I’m sure I can find some PC hardware to run it on. I certainly don’t see myself using it as an everyday machine, but as something to tinker on, and something to have running next to my everyday machine, I can see it being fun and possibly even useful.

TCP/IP Manager makes a good companion for DNS Bench for road warriors

Dave Farquhar Software

So you like the results you get with DNS Bench, but you have a laptop you take on the road a lot?

Use DNS Bench to find the best results for the places you go most frequently, then use TCP/IP Manager to save those settings and switch between them. Read more

Do you think if software cost less, people would pirate less?

Dave Farquhar Software , , , ,

The BSA says 57% of people use pirated software. A big part of the problem is that software is just too expensive. You can buy a decent computer for $300, and the copy of Windows that comes with it accounts for 1/3 of the cost.

Microsoft Office Home and Business, which includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook, retails for another $280. Office Professional, which includes Publisher and Access, retails for $500.

So even if you opt for the cut-down Home and Business version, you’ve already spent more on software than you spent on the hardware it runs on. Read more

Getting Firefox out of the doldrums

Dave Farquhar security, Software , ,

John C. Dvorak asks what’s wrong with Firefox, and suggests forking as a possible solution.

It sounds to me like one or more plugins he’s running is causing problems. I run Firefox on Vista (unfortunately), with as few plugins as possible, and I don’t have the issues he describes. Memory usage does spiral out of control if I go long enough between restarting the browser, but restarting the browser once a week keeps it tolerable.
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How to quickly find the differences between two Word documents

Dave Farquhar Office, Software , , ,

From time to time, I have to deal with new revisions of familiar implementation guides or other system documentation, and the authors rarely include a changelog in the document. And of course the first question anyone asks about the new guide is what’s changed. That means I have to find the differences between two Word documents.

This week I found myself collaborating on a long-ish document and needing to synchronize some changes. Word’s tracked changes and comments can help somewhat, but generally I find them clumsy and annoying.

If you have five minutes and a willingness to use a command prompt, you can find the differences easily, then work from there.
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Why I won’t be using Google Drive

Dave Farquhar Software ,

Google Drive, on its surface, looks useful. They give me a few gigs of storage that I can access from any computer with Internet access. I could use it like a virtual USB drive.

Except I won’t. The terms of service are too problematic for me. Read more

Easier deep Firefox SQL optimization

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , , ,

Last year I examined ways to optimize Firefox’s SQLite databases. I’ve since found I like it better when I just put the Firefox profile in a ramdisk, but that may not be an option in all cases.

If you don’t want to go the latter route and would like to avoid the command line jockeying, give Speedyfox a look. And even if you’ve put Firefox in a ramdisk, this program can be useful. You won’t notice any speedup inside a ramdisk, but SQL optimization saves storage space, which is always at a premium inside ramdisks. Read more

Move the print spool directory to your ramdisk

Dave Farquhar Software, Windows , , , , ,

You can improve the speed of printing slightly and, depending on the nature of your print jobs, dramatically reduce disk writes if you move the print spool directory to your ramdisk. It’s a little performance tweak you might have never heard of, but it’s helpful.

This trick works best with a ramdisk product that loads a disk image at startup, such as Dataram Ramdisk.

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