Existing users, 
User Name Vic Lennard
Member Since 2000-07-18
Total number of Feedback Posts: 24
Total number of comments: 8
Last 10 Feedback Posts by Vic Lennard [ Search for All ]
Synchronize! Pro X 6.0.7 (Mac OS X)
About 18 months ago I left a negative review of SP based on my experience with both the product and the company. My main beef wasn't the pricing structure but the poor, patronising support and bug-ridden app. My final comment was: Never trust *any* company that has a "lots of people use our product and no one complains" attitude. Looking at recent comments from Qdea, they're still up to their old games. "Tens of thousands of customers worldwide have found that the quality and reliability of the software and the timely, expert technical support are worth the purchase price." Do three things before buying this app: 1. Read through the feedback. See how many justifiable negatives there are. 2. Ask Qdea to justify their statement that they have "Tens of thousands of customers worldwide" and find out how big the company is in terms of personnel. Developing and maintaining a crucial app like this and providing good end-user support requires a team of people if it's done properly. 3. Try the alternatives. I've use Tri-Edre's Tri-Backup for 18 months without a single problem and I run the IT for a large design studio. Just my 2c worth... [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 4 of 4 users found this helpful
Wednesday, June 03 2009 @ 12:33 AM PDT
QuarkXPress 8.0 (Mac OS X)
Why won't anyone download the 60-day trial, work with it and then post a review? Why live in the past? Judge QuarkXPress 8 on its merits. I've been using it for three weeks or so. In that time there have been no crashes or unexpected quits - not that I get many problems with v7. On a dual-processor G5 running Mac OS X 10.4, the screen redraws are much faster than with v7 - my productivity is definitely up irrespective of the new user interface. Being able to just draw a text box and instantly type into it is a no-brainer - should have been there years ago. And no, Adobe didn't 'invent' this for InDesign as it was a standard feature in PageMaker when I used it back in the early 90s. The new user interface has allowed me to speed up quite considerably courtesy of instant object rotation, live preview of changes, Adobe-style bezier tools and the easy-to-use measurements palette. Dragging text and graphics to or from any drag-&-drop-enabled app is also a useful addition, probably more so than some others such as being able to use grids on individual text boxes. But the new hanging characters feature and vertical alignment have their place in day-to-day work. It's also nice to see an end to language problems with QXP handling 30+ languages as standard. Being able to import Illustrator files as well as Photoshop ones has useful and having Flash creation/exporting as standard makes QXP 8 an all-in-one for design: paper, web and presentation. Yes, I use InDesign too but given the option I'd rather work in QXP and v8 has enough going for it to convince me to upgrade. Vic Lennard Cover disc editor, Macworld UK magazine [alert admin]
Read Comments (2) | More Info | 2 of 4 users found this helpful
Monday, August 04 2008 @ 05:49 AM PDT
MacBornes 1.0.1 (Mac OS X)
It's refreshing to find a highly addictive game where you don't have to kill something or control falling objects. This is a well thought out take on an old card game. At the hardest level, you're unlikely to win more than 50% of games - and that's what makes you keep coming back for just one more try... No crashing problems at all on 10.4.9 - totally stable. [alert admin]
Wednesday, April 16 2008 @ 09:09 AM PDT
Synchronize! Pro X 5.0.7 (Mac OS X)
Unreliable and poor tech support 
I've owned SP for some time, using it to provide an hourly backup for my studio's files. Two bugs appeared: an error of "too many open files"; and a "can't find disk XXX" even though the disk was clearly visible on the desktop. This happened with both Mac OS X Server 10.3 and 10.4. I lived with this for some time, finding that quitting SP and relaunching solved both problems - but this is backup software, it's commercially priced and shouldn't have these problems. I reported them to tech support and was told: "Synchronize! Pro X asks to close every file it opens. It couldn't work properly if it didn't, because the maximum number of open files is 256, and Synchronize! Pro X routinely copies hundreds of thousands of files in its backups." "I have no other reports of a similar problem, despite the fact that Synchronize! Pro X is in daily use on tens of thousands of computers worldwide." "What this means to me is that your computer is not operating properly. If it were my computer, I would use Disk Utility to "Repair Disk". If the problem persisted, I would reinstall OS X in an attempt to eliminate the problem." My knowledge of Macs is quite extensive and I didn't believe this. Sloth confirmed the existence of numerous temporary files. Tech support then commented: "Mea culpa! I've attached a version of Synchronize! Pro X that I believe no longer exhibits the problem." I tried using the v5.0.8 beta but it wouldn't accept my serial number. What followed was numerous emails back and forth and a call to Hugh Sontag (both tech director and tech support) in the States. He absolutely refused to give me a working serial number, insisting this was user error. I'm positive it isn't but even if it is, what kind of company takes such an arrogant, intractable approach? In the end, I gave up. I bought Tri Backup (at half the price) which works perfectly, especially as my server is working on a non-Intel machine (Tri Backup is PPC only). The moral? Never trust *any* company that has a "lots of people use our product and no one complains" attitude. Vic [alert admin]
Read Comments (1) | More Info | 2 of 2 users found this helpful
Monday, October 15 2007 @ 02:16 AM PDT
Xslimmer 1.2.5 (Mac OS X)
... before using this on any app you intend to update. I've had a number of apps refuse to update - including QuarkXPress 7.2 [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 3 of 4 users found this helpful
Sunday, August 26 2007 @ 06:12 AM PDT
The Music N*** 1.7 (Mac OS X)
The name is patently ludicrous and indefensible. While it's an interesting way to market a piece of freeware, perhaps the author can donate the 'donationware' income to a Jewish charity... [alert admin]
Read Comments (2) | More Info | 2 of 3 users found this helpful
Thursday, June 15 2006 @ 10:42 PM PDT
Euphoria 1.7 (Mac OS X)
The files are dated from 2002 hence the requirement of Photoshop 6. Why is this up here at all? [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Monday, July 18 2005 @ 08:49 PM PDT
Extensis Suitcase 11.0.4 (Mac OS X)
As a long-time reviewer for Macworld UK magazine, I originally used Suitcase 3, then switched to ATM Deluxe in July 2000 after reviewing ATM Deluxe 4.6 and Suitcase 9. Suitcase X didn't really change my mind but on moving to OS X, I had no choice. And Suitcase X1 has been a nightmare. Turning individual fonts on and off takes around 20-30 seconds. Opening an InDesign or Quark doc with lots of fonts can take 20-30 minutes. I've followed Extensis' guidelines to the letter regarding clearing font caches, making sure only one version of each font exists (yet I still get daily warnings of duplicates), etc. I've binned the preferences and rebuilt the library countless times. I've also had various email "conversations" with Extensis. Their advice? "Have you checked how many weights are contained in the font Suitcase? If the font suitcase contains a large amount of screen fonts it may be taking longer than normal to activate all the screen fonts. What you can do is scan the font through FontDoctor and set to to remove any Extra fonts within the font suitcase." The last time I emailed them it took 4 months to respond - and that was with a pile of URLs for me to work my way through. FontAgent Pro is very different. Set up took 5 minutes. Fonts are switched on within Quark, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop without problems. They're also turned on at system level with an unobtrusive on-screen dialogue informing me. If you're suffering with Suitcase 11.0.4 (or earlier), buy FontAgent Pro. $99 well spent. It works. Period. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Friday, July 08 2005 @ 11:46 PM PDT
FontAgent Pro 3.0.2 (Mac OS X)
At last - a reliable font manager in OS X
As a long-time reviewer for Macworld UK magazine, I originally used Suitcase 3, then switched to ATM Deluxe in July 2000 after reviewing ATM Deluxe 4.6 and Suitcase 9. Suitcase X didn't really change my mind but on moving to OS X, I had no choice. And Suitcase X1 has been a nightmare. Turning individual fonts on and off takes around 20-30 seconds. Opening an InDesign or Quark doc with lots of fonts can take 20-30 minutes. I've followed Extensis' guidelines to the letter regarding clearing font caches, making sure only one version of each font exists (yet I still get daily warnings of duplicates), etc. I've binned the preferences and rebuilt the library countless times. I've also had various email "conversations" with Extensis. Their advice? "Have you checked how many weights are contained in the font Suitcase? If the font suitcase contains a large amount of screen fonts it may be taking longer than normal to activate all the screen fonts. What you can do is scan the font through FontDoctor and set to to remove any Extra fonts within the font suitcase." The last time I emailed them it took 4 months to respond - and that was with a pile of URLs for me to work my way through. Font Agent Pro is very different. Set up took 5 minutes. Fonts are switched on within Quark, InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop without problems. They're also turned on at system level with an unobtrusive on-screen dialogue informing me. If you're suffering with Suitcase 11.0.6 (or earlier), buy Font Agent Pro. It works. Period. Vic Lennard [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 0 of 1 users found this helpful
Friday, July 08 2005 @ 12:23 AM PDT
Extensis Portfolio 7.0.6 (Mac OS X)
Am I the only one with this problem? Portfolio 7.0.6 works fine except when I create a watched folder, it makes our Apple Server X 10.3.9 quit. It literally crashes our server - even if the watched folder is on a local machine. The same problem occurred with 7.0.4 Vic [alert admin]
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Wednesday, July 06 2005 @ 02:38 AM PDT
Last 10 Comments by Vic Lennard [ Search for All ]
So on what grounds are you giving it one star? Because you had a problem with the upgrade procedure??
Original feedback item : Read More
Monday, August 04 2008 @ 05:16 AM PDT
Of course QXP makes PDF/X-1a files directly (and has done since v7). And if you feel the typography is inferior to InDesign, I can only presume you haven't worked with v7 or v8. In terms of creating pages, QXP was much faster than ID (I use both) even before v8. The improved UI is more intuitive (I've been working with it in a busy design studio for the past 3 weeks) and screen redraws much faster…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Sunday, August 03 2008 @ 03:21 AM PDT
This is a really dumb comment. If your phone's not on the list, it isn't supported. Simple as that. Why complain?
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Saturday, December 29 2007 @ 05:05 AM PST
Tuner seems more or less useless
I think we get the message by the fifth repetition...
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Sunday, June 24 2007 @ 03:16 AM PDT
I've been using SPX for 15 months to provide a backup for a server (running Mac OS X Server) of around 250GB. This includes multiple partitions and drives. Aside from the Mac OS X 10.3 "too many files open" bug, which disappeared when I upgraded to Mac OS X Server 10.4, SPX has run flawlessly in backup mode. I've read through many of the problems here and most, if not all, of them appear to…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Wednesday, January 03 2007 @ 07:45 AM PST
To eliminate the need of this program...
I've also been on eBay for over 5 years and I have no problem with the concept of sniping. It's part and parcel of being on an online auction. If you don't like it, try QXL, Lycos or one of the other second-rate auctions.
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Monday, May 23 2005 @ 01:13 AM PDT
Sorry? I have over 1GB of memory and no problems with other games including Halo. I'm not running Panther, which may have some bearing.
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Saturday, February 14 2004 @ 08:33 AM PST
Unreal Tourny 2004 can be played on 1Ghz G4 PowerMac
Perhaps it's because you have an nvidia card and that the game has been optimised for playability with one. I've now tried this on a number of ATI-carded G4s and the frame rate is unplayable on each of them.
Original feedback item : Read More
Saturday, February 14 2004 @ 08:30 AM PST
