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User Name pvonk46
Member Since 2004-02-07
Total number of Feedback Posts: 27
Total number of comments: 52
Last 10 Feedback Posts by pvonk46 [ Search for All ]
MarketAnalyst X 4.5.4 (Mac OS X)
I gave a 5-star review four years ago, but now I must downgrade this to 1-star. For two years, I wasn't using the app, and after an upgrade or two in OS/X along with two new laptops, I tried the app today and found it wouldn't even load anymore. Tried to download the app again, but the source web site is non-existent. After searching the web for other links to downloads I gave up - they all failed. I can only assume the product has gone away. [alert admin]
Wednesday, July 01 2009 @ 01:09 PM PDT
BdCalendar 1.120 (Mac OS X)
While there are a number of competing apps, the one thing that BdCalendar offers that is important to me is the multi-month view (I like 6 months). I've got another app that does this but it requires a number of clicks to get to it. I confess that like a Swiss army knife, I don't use most of the features, but the ones I use are intuitive and have been rock solid for years. [alert admin]
Saturday, June 27 2009 @ 06:27 AM PDT
Back-In-Time 1.3.4 (Mac OS X)
Doesn't work on my mounted remote drive 
I have a Mac Mini that is the home's Time Machine "server", all my other macs back up to attached drives on the Mini. I just tried Back-in-Time; my MacBook Pro has the remote volume on the Mini that serves as the Pro's TM backup destination mounted. In fact TM just made a successful backup 20 minutes ago. I invoked Back-in-Time and when it's window appeared on the desktop, it told me "Time Machine Data not found". The mounted TM volume is on my desktop, but BIT couldn't find it. So I dragged the volume's icon into BIT, but again BIT said that no TM data could be found. I opened the volume to verify that the sparseBundle file is there, it is. So for me, BIT can't reach my TM backups. [alert admin]
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Sunday, March 08 2009 @ 06:29 PM PDT
Path Finder 5.0.1 (Mac OS X)
I upgraded this morning to the 0.1 version from 5.0.0, which I upgraded to yesterday. 5.0.1 downloaded fine, then I clicked on the install and reopen button (or whatever it says). That's when the system froze. I could only do a hard reboot. When the system came up, I had nothing on the desktop - no volumes or file/folders that are supposed to be on the desktop. File Finder was listed next to the Apple icon on the menu, but when I right-click on the desktop, I got no pop-up menu. I was able to open a Finder window and look around my files, all seem there, even the desktop folder in my home account with all the files contained in it. But nothing showed up on the desktop. When I click on the File Finder menu item, most menu items on the pull down menu are gray. I can close FF, but that does nothing on the desktop. I'm unable to open a FF finder window. After repeated attempts to fix the system (reboot a number of times, try a few things in the system preferences), I gave up. I'm now restoring from a Time Machine backup. I should end up with FF 5.0.0 when done and hopefully I'll be back in business. I'll wait before upgrading to 5.0.1 and check MacFixIt for any bad reports. BTW, the new version 5 has changed a few things in the finder window - it'll take a little getting used to. Over all, in the day that I used it before this problem, there were a few things that made the 5.0 worth getting. Like getting remote volumes in the left panel - that was a big one for me. The split finder window will be helpful at times. [alert admin]
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Tuesday, October 28 2008 @ 01:17 PM PDT
viJournal 1.8.4 (Mac OS X)
I downloaded the .dmg.bz2 file and invoked it, which resulted in a .dmg file being created. When I invoked this file, nothing happened, so I invoked DiskImageMounter using this file and got an error window saying "no mountable file systems". I have no problems with the other hundred or so .dmg files I have. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, July 30 2008 @ 02:30 PM PDT
StoryMill 3.0.2 (Mac OS X)
The first thing I noticed is that on my MacBook Pro's screen, the written text is miniscule. True, for chapters, you can double click the chapter name and a new edit window pops up, allowing you to set the zoom level, but all the other windows don't seem to have the setting. My old, tired eyes have a hard time with this. I set up a time line (one nifty feature) with a number of scenes - these are horizontal bars along a time line. A little later, after switching to another view and returning, all the scenes but one had disappeared. Closed the app and later opened it up again - lo and behold, the scenes reappeared. You can grab the bar and stretch or compact it, but sometimes, as the mouse moves left and right, the bar looses connection and begins moving at a different rate or just collapses. Definite problems here. Overall, I just felt that the product didn't work with me, didn't fit like a glove. I've used Scrivener, and that seems very intuitive and responsive to me. StoryMill did not impress me. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 2 users found this helpful
Monday, April 28 2008 @ 06:08 PM PDT
Desktoptopia 1.5 (Mac OS X)
Doesn't work with PathFinder's desktop
This app seems like a good idea, except for two things that affected me - 1) I use PathFinder and have its desktop active. Desktoptopia doesn't seem to work in this scenario. 2) Using Desktoptopia's preferences, I tried to turn off some of its themes, one being "film", unfortunately, I got a warning window telling me I couldn't do that, since "film" was a sponsored theme (or something like that). I felt I was being forced to accept one of the themes I didn't want, and that didn't sit well with me. I've removed it and have gone back to ChangeDesktop, which does work with PathFinder, although it does not provide its own images (it uses OSX). [alert admin]
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Saturday, April 12 2008 @ 05:44 PM PDT
Tri-BACKUP 5.0.0 (Mac OS X)
I own version 4.0.4 and have basically left it unused since Leopard, waiting for an update. During this long wait, I've changed my strategy to using Time Machine and SuperDuper (TM/SD) as a backup duo. SD for bootable external drive (weekly schedule) and TM for hourly backups (which works quite well - I've even performed full restores on two Macs). However, having seen this page (a new version), I fired up Tri-Backup and it immediately told me there was an update. When I went to the download site, the note there indicated that this was a beta! I don't know whether it really is or not, considering I don't see that mentioned here (unless I overlooked something). The previous poster mentions $69 for the upgrade - so I checked around their web site and found a statement that major upgrades (e.g. 2 to 3) requires a new purchase. Oh well, I'll skip the $69; I'm pleased with the TM/SD combination. Besides, while Tri-Backup worked well for me in the past, its interface took me quite some time to understand, when I first got it several years ago. I don't know whether it has improved or not. For anyone interested in buying it for the first time, I'd suggest you try the trial version first. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, February 27 2008 @ 03:21 AM PST
MacCvsX 3.3b2 (Mac OS X)
I can't get this to start in OSX Leopard. Invoking it leads to the error The application quit unexpectedly. [alert admin]
Thursday, February 14 2008 @ 12:00 AM PST
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.0.1 (Mac OS X)
Trouble and I think it's CCC's problem
After I first upgraded to Leopard, I downloaded CCC 3.0.1 and successfully cloned the system boot volume to an external drive; and it did boot up just fine. I recently bought a new Iomega 120 GB portable drive and tried CCC again (now it was with OSX 5.1). The copy want fine until 11.4 GB were copied and then CCC just stopped copying. It didn't freeze, it just stopped copying. I then retried a number of times, and CCC always stopped at the same file. So I moved the file to another drive and tried again. Now it was the next file in the folder that CCC stopped at. I moved that file and CCC stopped at the next flle (always at 11.4 GB). I also reformatted as GUID-HFS+ (Journaled) several times (this is on a MBP). Thinking it was the HD, I used another backup app and it did copy the whole drive (but it was not Leopard compatible; the copy did not boot successfully - but the app did copy the whole drive). So now I suspect not the drive but CCC. I've run DiskUtility to check the source and destination drives and they checked out. So, at this point I'm waiting for SuperDuper or a newer version of CCC. [alert admin]
Read Comments (1) | More Info | 3 of 4 users found this helpful
Thursday, December 06 2007 @ 06:12 PM PST
Last 10 Comments by pvonk46 [ Search for All ]
So... one star, bottom of the barrel, worst software around, totally useless. I think we're a tad over critical, considering what such software COULD be like if it were really the worst around.
Original feedback item : Read More
Wednesday, August 26 2009 @ 02:16 PM PDT
Well, not really. 4.8 is earlier than 4.30.
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Monday, July 27 2009 @ 07:59 AM PDT
Who at VT does Elixer know????
Well, I don't know about dating the head of VT, but at approx $0.10 per icon, I'd look at free sites first. But I do have to say, these icons are quite attractive.
Original feedback item : Read More
Friday, July 24 2009 @ 12:23 PM PDT
One star? So this means that this is among the worst apps available today. Oh wait, the original post discusses only one issue, upgrading the app. Considering the overall features and capabilities, assigning one star because of one side-issue is indicative of an emotional response that is not informative and mature.
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Wednesday, June 03 2009 @ 01:48 PM PDT
Update on rating of my previous review
Well, I must apologize, your initial review (which does get into details) was not displaying in the initial reviews, but I found it eventually.
Original feedback item : Read More
Thursday, May 28 2009 @ 07:23 AM PDT
Update on rating of my previous review
It's usually helpful to explain *why* you think an app is worthy of one star (which, in my book, should be an app that is unworkable and bad in every way). You're comment provides me with no understanding as to why this is a less than stellar app.
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Thursday, May 28 2009 @ 07:19 AM PDT
Crashes with Safari 4 beta, apparently
So let me get this - the app is buggy when using it with a beta browser? Does the word "beta" mean anything?
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Monday, May 11 2009 @ 05:01 AM PDT
Doesn't work on my mounted remote drive
Okay, did more reading (this is not my day) and made an alias of the sparsebundle file and put it in a special BIT folder for aliases. Tested this and it works. If the sparsebundle is not mounted, BIT will mount it. Unfortunately, I get a small window saying it's opening the file. That stays there at least 15 minutes. But if I press the "Skip" button, the mount appears…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, March 09 2009 @ 08:28 AM PDT
Doesn't work on my mounted remote drive
I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't read the instructions carefully enough - I'm supposed to *open* the sparsebundle file first. I've done that and BIT is up and running. The opened sparsebundle file icon usually appears on the desktop when TM begins a backup and goes away when it's done. To use BIT I have to manually mount the remote drive, and open the sparse bundle (assuming TM hasn't opened it for an…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, March 09 2009 @ 07:50 AM PDT
You are correct - if you don't know what CVS or Subversion is, then you are not a programmer. This is version control software.
Original feedback item : Read More
Saturday, January 17 2009 @ 11:46 AM PST
