User Profile for linguist

User Name linguist

Member Since 2000-10-24

Total number of Feedback Posts: 34

Total number of comments: 1

Last 10 Feedback Posts by linguist [ Search for All ]

Apple iPhone 2.0.1 (Mac OS X)

Contrary to most of the comments below, I had no problems (other than a slow download, just after the update was released) doing this update on my 16 Gb 1st gen iPhone via iTunes (7.7.1). I don't notice a lot of change, but I haven't used it much since the update. Enough to see that it still works, though.... [alert admin]

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Tuesday, August 05 2008 @ 06:17 AM PDT

Saft 10.0.1 (Mac OS X)

Does the "Input Manager" method really work?

I installed Saft 10.0.1 on my Leopard system (dual-quad MacPro), and chose the Input manager method, which I expected to act the way Saft did in previous releases. There's no Saft preference panel when I open Safari, though, and no evidence that Saft is doing anything. What did I do wrong? [alert admin]

Parallels Desktop 3.0 build 4560.0 (Mac OS X)

Lousy support, but no need to put up with it

I've used previous versions of Parallels since getting my MBP in January. Nothing dramatic, but it was at least an improvement over Virtual PC... When the 3.0 version appeared, I tried to upgrade to it. Parallels' website repeatedly rejected my perfectly valid credit card information (on multiple cards), and refused to take my money. I wrote them about this ... a couple of days later I got a completely mechanical "thanks for your input" reply, and then a few days after that an equally mechanical "your order has been canceled." No point in struggling further -- I picked up VMWare Fusion, paid the discounted pre-release price (no problem with the same card I tried to offer Parallels), and installed this instead. It seems completely smooth and stable, even though still beta. I see no reason to go back: Parallels made me a happy VMWare customer. [alert admin]

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Wednesday, July 18 2007 @ 03:27 AM PDT

Garmin WebUpdater 2.0.0.1 Beta (Mac OS X)

Which products does this actually support?

If this is an example of Garmin's Mac support, they still have a ways to go. I bought a GPSMAP 76CS a couple of years ago, and have been frustrated ever since by the inability to load maps to it, update it, etc. Virtual PC never provided an environment where I could see it, and I kept imagining they might actually come through with some Mac support. This software can't see the 76CS, even though it is a model with a USB connection. Since there is no indication anywhere of what models the program does support, I had hoped this would be one of them, but apparently it's a "discontinued" model, and thus out of luck. The problem, of course, is that Garmin's USB drivers are (or at least used to be) strange and non-standard. But you would think that the one organization that could write software top accommodate that (given that they won't allow anyone else to) would be Garmin. But no such luck. [alert admin]

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Sunday, April 01 2007 @ 09:12 AM PDT

CommuniGate Systems - CommuniGate Pro 5.1.8 (Mac OS X)

It's free for five accounts or less

I bought CommuniGate Pro many years ago and kept updating through 4.X as long as the upgrades were free. I dropped out when the licensing terms changed radically, and ran 4.X without problem for quite a while. This is really very nice software for managing a lot of things easily. Now, however, it turns out that CommuniGate is FREE for users with five accounts or less, so I'm going back to upgrade. Try it, you'll like it, as long as you're a small enough operation to fly under the 5 account limit, [alert admin]

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Thursday, March 29 2007 @ 07:31 PM PDT

TomTom HOME 1.5.032 (Mac OS X)

Fine, but look out for TomTom

As software goes, this is reasonable, and it does provide Mac support that Garmin has been promising and failing to deliver. However. Before investing in TomTom products, you should take into account their very poor service record. Their "support" staff generally know little about the specifics of the products, and you'll pretty much have to rely on the web for real information. Most important, they do not provide updated versions of their maps with any regularity, and when they do, they usually do so only if you buy a whole new system. I found this out the hard way after investing a lot in TT Navigator 5, including maps of all of Western Europe (laboriously downloaded and converted via Virtual PC, since they didn't previously provide Mac versions of the map-extraction software!), only to find out a year later that new maps would only be provided for Navigator 6 -- which won't run on the Palm Tungsten T3 I use Navigator 5 on. Bottom line: the products are nice (though not uniquely so any more, with increased competition), but the company has a very bad reputation for maintaining and servicing them. [alert admin]

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Sunday, February 11 2007 @ 03:14 PM PST

cb2Bib 0.6.0 (Mac OS X)

Where is qmake?

Although the information here on VT says that "Trolltech's Qt/Mac 3.3 C++ framework - a download bookmark for a binary installer of Qt/Mac 3.3.5 (GPL/QPL edition) is provided within the installation folder" I can't find it there (or elsewhere). Configure thus fails (obviously), and it seems that getting this myself is excluded since it costs thousands of dollars to license Qt... Where do I find qmake, and how do I install it? [alert admin]

SUNRISE Personal Excel Budgeting 1.0.1 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)

Is this a joke?

This Excel spreadsheet might be of use to some people, I suppose (the fact that it's set up for Australia might turn out to be a weakness, though at the moment I am actually in Australia, so I won't complain about that). But since it's hard coded for the year 1 July 2004 - 30 June 2005, it's not going to be useful for long. You can't even put your own name on it, because that would require a registration code. I'm probably missing something fundamental, but this gift from Surnise doesn't seem terribly generous. [alert admin]

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Saturday, April 23 2005 @ 10:07 PM PDT

BibDesk 0.99 (Mac OS X)

Waiting for crossrefs...

BibDesk has matured into a fine application - something I'd like to use instead of editing bib files in emacs. It keeps getting better, and I'm glad to see macros now working. But until it understands crossrefs, I (and others with large, complex bibliographies containing multiple items from the same source) won't be able to use it seriously. [alert admin]

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Friday, April 01 2005 @ 01:13 AM PST

Mulberry 3.1.3 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)

No spam filtering?

I too have tried hard to like this program. I've bought licenses for it over the years, but each version, when I try to use it on a regular basis, turns out to have some show-stopping problem. This time it seem to run without crashing or hanging, but as far as I can see there's no way to filter spam when you use it. There's no built in filtering system, like Apple Mail.app, and my preferred spam filter (SpamSieve) can't be used with it at all - I understand Mulberry doesn't have hooks in it that most other mail clients do which would allow that. So it's back to Mail.app, once again....[sigh] [alert admin]

Last 10 Comments by linguist [ Search for All ]

It's free for five accounts or less

CommuniGate actually got in touch with me (as a lapsed former customer) and when I contacted them they told me about this. They call it the "Community Edition," but it's just plain CGPro, which doesn't ask for a license as long as you're under 5 users. See the article at http://www.communigate.com/news/c-news_article_08072007.html for more.

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Tuesday, October 23 2007 @ 08:24 AM PDT