Existing users, 
User Name epc
Member Since 2000-07-03
Total number of Feedback Posts: 330
Total number of comments: 91
Last 10 Feedback Posts by epc [ Search for All ]
TinkerTool System 2.1 (Mac OS X)
I like the previous version better 
I'm a big fan of TinkerTool and TinkerTool System, but there are a few negative aspects with this new version: As others have mentioned, there's no discounted price for owners of version one. The reason according to their website is that "The efforts to check legitimacy of the upgrade buyers would be higher than the product price." I'm not sure about this. I would gladly provide them with my registration information so the effort would be on my part and not theirs. If 2 or more people provide identical information they could ban those serials. The software itself received a change in the GUI. Navigation now requires an additional step. With the original version, users could select an icon on the toolbar and go directly to a specific feature (e.g., Maintenance, Clean Up, Files, etc.). With the revised version users have to "Show All" features and then select one. I did not find this as efficient as the previous version. For evaluation purposes "You can launch the application five (5) times per computer only." Unfortunately, some features require multiple launches. For example, I cleared my font cache and had to logout. After login TTS2 was automatically launched to finish the task, so 2 out of 5 launches were used testing a single feature. TinkerTool System 2 adds many features as well as Snow Leopard compatibility. For new users it may be worth it. In my case I see no reason to upgrade. I would rate the previous version with 5 stars, but with the lack of upgrade discount, the limited demo, and the inefficient interface, version 2 is not worthy of the same rating. [alert admin]
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Monday, August 31 2009 @ 01:11 PM PDT
Microsoft Office 2008 12.1.9 (Mac OS X)
It's interesting to see all the anti-Microsoft comments from Mac users, but my experience with Microsoft has been positive. BTW, for the past 10 years I've used Macs 99% of the time. One reviewer suggests to "check out Apple's iWork package, which has 99.9% of the features at HALF the price." This is not accurate. I've used iWork since it came out, and Keynote before it was bundled with Pages as iWork. Prior to that I also used AppleWorks. For me, the long-term cost of iWork has been more expensive that Office given that iWork has no upgrade path. The only iWork application that I prefer when compared to a Microsoft Office application is Keynote. I prefer Word instead of Pages, and Excel is vastly superior to Numbers. For very basic work Pages and Numbers are sufficient, but for my needs I prefer the aforementioned Microsoft products. Thanks to Microsoft's promotions and discounts, Office has been quite affordable. Some people got Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition for around $30 (thirty) dollars. Pretty good deal. I got my copy of the Special Media Edition for the price of the Student Version. iWork is indeed cheaper, but for many power users it is not sufficient and as mentioned there's no upgrade path so after a couple of years the expense adds up. One big downside is the lack of VBA in Office 2008. They acknowledged this issue many months before the software was released. That's why I kept a 2004 version. I've read that VBA will be incorporated again in the future, hopefully as a free update. Regarding problems with Entourage, I use it to check 5 email accounts. I have not had any problems after the upgrade. Launch time is about 10 seconds on a Dual 2GHz PPC G5, OS X 10.5.7, with 160active fonts. Although I still prefer Entourage, I admit that Apple's Mail has gotten better with each release. I've said this before but it may be worth repeating. I did have problems with Office originally, until I did a complete clean installation of Leopard. Many of the problems I was experiencing were due to Leopard. The problems were not limited to Office, but to many other applications as well. I finally began using Leopard regularly after 10.5.3 or 10.5.4. Initial releases were extremely buggy. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, June 10 2009 @ 01:38 PM PDT
Microsoft Office 2008 12.1.9 (Mac OS X)
I had to install this update by downloading it manually and then installing. Auto Update would not run the installer, but running it manually worked fine. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 3 of 3 users found this helpful
Tuesday, June 09 2009 @ 01:29 PM PDT
iClock Pro 1.0b11 (Mac OS X)
Poor suppoprt, questionable development, odd pricing
Version 3 has not been updated since 2007. Now there's a new beta for version 1 of iClock Pro, so I became intrigued. For my needs, it doesn't seem to add much compared to my current solutions. In March, the price was $10. Now it's $20 and I can get a $5 discount. Once iClock is officially released, the price will be $30. Interesting pricing scheme, but I would not pay more than $5 or $10 to upgrade my old version. When I began using iClock I don't think there were alternatives for the Mac. Today there's World Clock Deluxe, You Control, Menu Calendar Clock, Meridian, Time Palette, and more. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 2 users found this helpful
Friday, May 08 2009 @ 01:25 PM PDT
Apple Java for OS X 10.5 Update 3 (Mac OS X)
Still no 1.6 for PPC users. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 3 of 20 users found this helpful
Thursday, February 12 2009 @ 09:41 PM PST
Speed Download 5.1.1 (Mac OS X)
@freevito, You may want to ask Yazsoft directly about the upgrade path. As you mentioned, their support is quite good. I've used Speed Download since the first version came out, before it became a Yazsoft product. Overall I've been very happy with it, and was happy with my upgrades up to version 4. I avoided version 5 until I bought it as part of the givegoodfood2yourmac promo. I only bought it since discounts were higher the more programs a person purchased as part of that promo, so buying Speed Download enabled me get a better discount for the applications I wanted, and the price was the same or lower than buying an upgrade. Regarding version 5 the old Floater is gone, and instead users can minimize the main interface. According to Yazsoft this was "a serious upgrade." I wish they would include the option for users to decide whether to use the old floater or the new minimized Speed Download. The floater had the advantages of being smaller, displaying the number of downloads, and being independent from the main window which was important for people who liked to use both elements of the interface. Gone are other features as well. For example, the toolbar used to have icons to Hold or Queue the downloads. These commands are no longer available via the toolbar, although they're still present via a contextual menu. In practical terms, it means wasting more time to invoke those commands. Instead of using one click to achieve a goal, users now have to click twice. First to access the contextual menu (and wait for the menu to appear), and then to select an action. Version 5.1 crashed constantly. Yesterday 5.1.1 became available and the release notes indicate that it is "Optimized for Mac OS X 10.5.6" so hopefully that will eliminate the crashes. Up to version 4 I would rate the program with 5 stars. I may actually go back to using it instead of version 5, which deserves only 3 stars. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 6 of 7 users found this helpful
Saturday, January 10 2009 @ 02:51 PM PST
CTM FoxTrot Professional Search 2.0.2 (Mac OS X)
Very fast, but expensive, unreliable, and buggy
I agree with the previous reviewer and CTM gets an F for support, but I disagree with his rating of the software with an A. I would give them a C+ at best. It's quite expensive. Although its price is similar to Devon Think Pro Office, DTPO is a more refined product and a beta for version 2 will be released soon. Indexing can take a very long time. This may be due to errors or due to the application actually working, but sometimes it's hard to tell. For example, after 5 hours indexing a 109 MB folder the index size was already 173 MB, which did not make sense. The folder I selected had less than 800 files, yet the index in FoxTrot Professional Search showed that almost 2,000 files had been indexed. I had to manually remove the "Main Index" file from my hard drive. For some reason it seems that removing it directly from within FoxTrot Professional's "Indexed Data" was not sufficient, although this process did work fine later with 2 other Indices. Sometimes when indexing a folder certain files are Blacklisted. Unfortunately this is not consistent. Removing the index and indexing the same folder again has resulted in no files at all being Blacklisted. Searches are lightning fast, but FoxTrot does not always find all the relevant documents. In one test it found many irrelevant results. I had a Folder named Influence, and searching for the word Influence showed the folder and all its contents. Half the contents were irrelevant and did not contain the word Influence. They were just random files I copied for the test. Typically all of the files inside my folders are already classified correctly, but I wanted to test this issue. On another test, I copied a word from a PDF document inside an 85 MB subfolder and searched for it. Surprisingly, neither Spotlight nor Houdah Spot found the document. More surprisingly FoxTrot also failed to show any results. DTPO correctly showed the document. One issue to consider is that although FoxTrot launches fast and the search speed is impressive, displaying the results may be very slow. For example, with one search it took less than a second to find all relevant results, but it took over a minute to actually display the result in the first PDF document. It was faster to launch the identified document and do a search withing Adobe Reader. On a positive note, Index-size seems to be smaller in FoxTrot than in DTPO. This was noticeable especially with larger Folders. Changing the name of an indexed folder in the Finder results in the folder no longer being recognized by FoxTrot as a "location." This is potentially a HUGE issue, since information will not be available for that Index. DTPO did not have that problem. My overall impressions are that FoxTrot Professional Search feels like a beta version, unreliable, often unresponsive, and inconsistent in terms of behavior. Activity Monitor often showed FTStarter and FTIndexer as Not Responding. Apparently this is normal behavior, but to find out I had to browse the Internet. Their Help and Manual are not too useful. Emailing them directly apparently was a waste of my time. FoxTrot has great potential, but based on my past experience with CTM I'm concerned that they'll release bug fixes as a version 2.5 or 3.0 and charge for an upgrade. I paid a few times for PowerMail and its respective "upgrades" and by version 5 I decided to move on to something else. If/when they fix this program, I'll give it a second look. As it is right now I would not purchase it. Dual 2 GHz PPC G5 8 GB RAM OS X 10.5.5 FoxTrot Professional Search 2.0.3 [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Tuesday, December 09 2008 @ 10:05 AM PST
iClip 4 (Mac OS X)
Have you tried PTH Pasteboard? Now I own 5 pasteboard applications, and PTH Pasteboard is the one I use every day. iClip 3 was really good, but it all went downhill with iClip 4. PTH Pasteboard has not failed me. I use a variety of clipboards, and assigned 500 items to my main clipboard. Can't complain. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Thursday, November 27 2008 @ 01:40 PM PST
Hear 1.0.3 (Mac OS X)
An update on my previous review
Back in August I gave HEAR 2 stars. To me it's unusable for the purpose of listening to music, given that the what I'm hearing sounds processed and artificial. For reference, I use a variety of "effects" such as delays, reverbs, equalizers, enhancers, exciters, compressors, limiters, etc., both in hardware and software versions. HEAR sounds so artificial that it is unusable for me when it comes to listening to music. Back then I even suggested a few features (e.g., resizable window, analyzer). No news on those. I gave HEAR a chance and used it with other media, such as games and movies. I ran into a problem since HEAR is not working for me when I use VLC. I reported the problem and received a reply 3 days later asking whether I had restarted my Mac. Apparently restarting has solved some issues. I told the support person that I had indeed restarted my Mac. I've also uninstalled and reinstalled HEAR, and restarted my Mac once again. It's been 51 days, I have not received a reply, and HEAR has not been updated. I wish I could update my review and give the software a higher rating. Unfortunately, it's as bad as when I reviewed it in August, but now with the added inconvenience of unresponsive support. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Friday, November 21 2008 @ 12:48 PM PST
Microsoft Office 2008 12.1.3 (Mac OS X)
I did have some problems initially, but since doing a Clean Install of OS X I've had no problems with Office 2008, and each update has been smooth. Regarding a previous review, Office is more than just Word. My version included Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, and Microsoft Expression Media. I also received a free upgrade to Microsoft Expression Media 2. For many people Pages is NOT a substitute for Word. Both programs have their advantages and disadvantages. In my case, although I have Pages, I use Word and Mellel most of the time. I also use Word 2004 given the lack of VBA with Office 2008. This issue affects mostly my use of Excel, but I also have some add-ons for Word that won't run under Word 2008. Regarding launch time, as far as I can tell there's no mention of any changes with this upgrade that would have an effect on launch time. Entourage takes a while to launch, so while it is launching I work on other things. Once it's running, it has not given me any problems. My rating for the price is high since I took advantage of a Microsoft rebate. I'm unfamiliar with current prices. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 2 of 2 users found this helpful
Thursday, October 16 2008 @ 01:15 AM PDT
Last 10 Comments by epc [ Search for All ]
Don't be surprised :-) Even Rob Griffiths -who has criticized Excel and praised Numbers- wrote that "Excel is still the best spreadsheet app on the Mac, by far" on his review of Microsoft Excel 2008 (Macworld). I haven't done any charting recently in Excel. I never liked the bloat this created, and as you mention Excel can become unresponsive. I will sometimes create simple charts in Excel but more commonly I will use an additional application. I haven't…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, July 20 2009 @ 06:38 PM PDT
I've read that any database is prone to corruption. Fortunately for me the last time I had a corrupted Entourage database was probably under OS 9, but it certainly happens. I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I try to keep a clean database. That is, I regularly back up my emails and remove them from Entourage. I use EEAX, and keep my full backup in ProVUE's Panorama. Just in case, these links may be useful: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/ http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/rebuild.html
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Wednesday, June 10 2009 @ 11:02 PM PDT
Maybe. But I think those applications were picked up by Power On Software. I don't remember if they made it to OS X, though.
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Tuesday, December 16 2008 @ 08:42 PM PST
Thanks for the comment. I'm sure that many people like it, and I have no doubt that I'm part of a minority. But in many cases listeners do not know better. This is just one of the problems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ I think that Bob Ludwig mentioned it in an interview. Bob Katz and Bob Clearmountain and many other mixing and mastering engineers have strong opinions about the state of modern recording, but I'm digressing... Eventually I'll create a few eq. presets,…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Sunday, August 10 2008 @ 09:09 PM PDT
Just an update. After doing a clean install of Leopard Spam Sieve's accuracy is a bit under 83%. I know that with training it will get better. Purify is working wonderful as a filter. It takes more effort to set it up, but it's worth it.
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Thursday, March 20 2008 @ 02:43 AM PDT
Needs improvement, but it's not that bad
Just to give you a quick update, and a few caveats. 1. I have not used the programs extensibly. It will take me a few months to do so :-) 2. I've used mostly Entourage, and have found the following issues: - Categories were not assigned to the folders that I imported from Entourage. Assigning categories is quick and easy. - Rules were imported, but I've had to re-select some folders in order for the rule to work. Easy…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Friday, March 14 2008 @ 02:52 PM PDT
WHERE are the PowerPC Speed Improvements Microsoft?!
I haven't had any speed problems. I'm using a Power PC Dual 2 GHz G5, OS X 10.5.2. I hope this helps.
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Wednesday, March 12 2008 @ 01:42 PM PDT
This is becoming a trend with a certain group of developers...
I guess there's more money to be made running MacHeist than developing great software. iClip was promising but falls short when compared to alternatives. MacHeist seems to be a hit. Perhaps John is more focused on that project. More money by being a middle man instead of a serious developer. I'm guilty of purchasing iClip, Disco, and AppZapper which is the only one that is not as bad. But I have learned my lesson and have avoided…
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Monday, March 03 2008 @ 08:30 PM PST
Upgrade Policy (reaction to reaction)
lfees1, are you serious when you write "As you can tell from Ian's response they truly "Get It""? In spite of the fact that this is your only post here at VersionTracker, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and will consider you an honest and independent supporter of Softpress. When you say "They are far and away the most reasonable and considerate software company with whom I have ever worked - and I've been a…
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Monday, March 03 2008 @ 12:47 PM PST
I have not tried it, although most of the problems I experienced seem to have been fixed. I contacted Kristian after having an awful experience with version 4.0, and soon after that 4.01 was out. It has definitely improved since version 4.0 http://www.iwascoding.com/GarageSale/versionHistory.php
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Friday, February 22 2008 @ 01:26 PM PST
