Deluge Review : Unthrottled Download

After being bored of using the slow downloads(5KB and below) using utorrent, I decided to check out another torrent client. After surfing the web for a while, I discovered Deluge, a torrent client originally developed for Linux, Mac OS and now ported to Windows.

1st thing 1st, throttle download is quite popular among Malaysia as our main ISP, TM Net, likes to control our bandwidth to make way for other users. They emphasize quantity over quality and now I can't wait till I change to another ISP in near future. What special in Deluge is that their download is unthrottled (or so I've heard), unlike utorrent. So you can download very fast using Deluge compared to utorrent.

The Deluge file size is 27MB and installation size is 100MB, which is a very LARGE difference between utorrent (less than 1MB for both). And the RAM it takes to run is around 60MB, compared to utorrent of only 8MB. AND it also LAGS when using the interface, such as changing the settings, opening the folder from the torrent list. But in the end, the download speed is FAST compared to utorrent, 30KB to 5KB of utorrent.

The Deluge have a Daemon port which I have no idea how to use it, and also you can specify when to seed using the seed ratio requirement. The GUI of Deluge looks very Gnome-ish (Linux users will know what this is), which looks very refreshing to me who always facing the Windows XP look.

To add a torrent file, you can't just double-click it. You have to click the "+" then find out where the torrent is to add it. At least it's faster when you have to add many torrent at once.

In the end, Deluge appeal to me because of the looks and most importantly, the speed! For those who have many space to spare, you should try out this torrent client.

How's your experience using this client? Does it offer better speed compared to other client? Kindly leave your comments here.

Digsby reviewed : An Almost All-in-One

If you got tired of Windows Live Messenger, there is alternative to the popular IM (instant messenger) service of Microsoft. Other than the web messenger Meebo that I reviewed, there is also Digsby, a new IM client. Digsby is developed by dotSyntax, LLC and rendered using Webkit (the same engine that powered Chrome and Safari).

After installing Digsby, I registered with Digsgy and login to Digsby. I'm greeted with a simple interface that looks good and simple in my eyes. Then it start login to my accounts 1 by 1. They got email notifications for Gmail, MSN, yahoo! and etc.


And they also have social networking shown below (source from Wikipedia):

• MySpace: updates to your friends' profiles, status, and private messages. Provides instant access to various parts of your MySpace account, such as your profile, home page, blog, etc.
• Facebook: updates in your friend feeds. Digsby now works with both the new and old styles of Facebook.
• Twitter: allowing you to easily submit new "tweets", and view your friends' tweets.
• LinkedIn: various updates from your friends.

I don't know about these social networking sites cause I never used them. But I think they fuction same way as the email notifications. Or maybe they just incorperate them into the contacts interface.

The chat interface looks good. And you can change the chat interface too. There are a lot of options to choose from, but I still prefer the "Smooth Operator" theme as other theme lags a bit whenever I want to trace back my conversation.

There is also a problem with the chat interface, where I can't see who really talking when I'm in MSN group chat session. It just display the contact name rather than the nickname of the person talking (typing I mean).

The status display are quite good too as you can type what you are doing. Or you can just choose the Away option.

Overall, this IM client is quite good, only the problem with displaying nickname in MSN group makes me from using Digsby and ditch the Windows Live Messenger.

Opera 10 alpha preview: Unfinished Porshe

Being the underdog of the Internet browser war, Opera still haven't given up it's effort of becoming top 2 or maybe top 3 browser. For you info, IE currently dominates the browser market, occupying 70% of the browser market while Mozilla Firefox occupies 20%, Safari 6% and Opera 0.8%. That 0.8% is really really low. Even Google Chrome beat it by 0.1% since it's release a few months ago.

I have been using Opera since version 8, thanks to the recommendation of a friend (jitren~). This version 10, codenamed Peregrine, retains the same visual interface as the version 9.5 Opera and up.

That visual not really bad, nor it is attractive. I just feels that that big black bar is taking too much space for tabs. I know the appearance can be changed, but still, why do Opera want that bar to become so BIG?

The Opera 10 boasts about it's ability so scored 100/100 in acid3 test. But, in my case, I only get 98/100. No matter how many times I refreshed, it still remain 98. Perhaps my download got a bit corrupted?

Since it's only an alpha version, I expected it to run into many problems, such as missing objects in browser or crash unexpectedly. Here, I must say that I'm pretty impressed with this alpha version, as it display correctly on websites that I frequently surf, expect for 1. It's the Blogger 'Create Post' section. It won't display all of the options such as font type, font size, alignment and etc. When I'm typing this post, I don't even know whether I'm in "Edit Html" or "Compose" mode.

Well, so far so good. I really like Opera browsers. Simple interface, fast load speed, and non-IE look, it really belongs to the royal section of web browser. But I will still be using Firefox for now, because I dearly need the Google toolbar (Gmail notifications and Pagerank) and the Flashgot extension (to intercept every download).

Click here to download the Opera 10 alpha 1.

Got any opinions about Opera? Or do you disagree with my preview? Then leave your comments~

AMD Display Driver 8.12 and ATI Avivo Video Converter

AMD has released the new display driver for this month (8.12). The driver enables owners of 4800 and 4600 series Radeon graphics cards to have the privilege of able to utilise the stream processors in these graphics cards for more general computing tasks that are handled by CPU nowadays. 

Simply said, the graphics cards will help CPU in processing, IF the software supports ATI Stream.

With the ability to harness the power of stream processors in 4800 and 4600 series Radeon graphics cards, AMD has released ATI Avivo Video Converter for free. This converter uses the ATI Stream to speed up the video conversion, up to 17x the speed of CPU conversion speed.

The converter is included inside the Catalyst 8.12 suite.

You can download the driver suite here and read more about the Avivo converter here.

Successful with the conversion? Then leave your comments here.

6 reasons why you should not choose LabelFlash or LightScribe

Label Flash and Light Scribe are both disc labeling technologies that lets you imprint some graphics on a disc. While it may sound cool that you can "burn" images on your disc with your computer, there are drawbacks that certainly make that thought vanish with a blink.

First and foremost, these technologies doesn't come cheap. It's the exact opposite, they are very expensive. You have to purchase a Light Scribe or Label Flash compatible blank disc which is 75% more expensive than normal blank disc. Imagine, for buying every 100 Light Scribe or Label Flash compatible blank disc, you can get 175 normal blank disc.

Secondly, you have to buy the Light Scribe or Label Flash compatible optical drive(CD/DVD-ROM) too. Though I don't know how much they cost now, but it is surely more expensive than normal optical drive. Combined the cost of blank disc and optical drive together, they are really really expensive.

Third, not all software supports these technologies, that's another reason you have to fork out money to buy the software too. Freeware such as CD BurnerXP does not support both the Label Flash and Light Scribe, but shareware such as Nero supports them both.

Fourth, you have to wait for the images to be "imprint" on the discs. The drive don't burn and imprint the images at the same time. You have to do one at a time and well, the "imprint" time is not as fast at burning. Light Scribe and Label Flash have to use at least 20 minutes and 7 minutes respectively to finish their imprint.

Fifth, the images that imprinted on the disc are not colorful as rainbow. Heck, they can't even print out more than 1 color. You can only look at the disc to admire the design rather then the color. And when you put the disc into your computer, I highly doubtful you can look at the design.

Finally, you have to store the disc away from extreme heat, humidity and direct sunlight. As if that is not enough, you have make sure your hand is very clean and free of grease to prevent the smearing of your image. This only applies for Light Scribe disc.

Below summarizes drawbacks of using Label Flash and Light Scribe :

1. More expensive blank disc as they need to be Light Scribe or Label Flash compatible (roughly 75% more expensive compared to normal blank disc)
2. More expensive Light Scribe or Label Flash optical drive
3. Have to buy specific software that supports Light Scribe or Label Flash
4. Long image "imprint" time (7 minutes for Label Flash and 20 Minutes for Light Scribe)
5. Mono colored images
6. Exercise precaution when storing the disc (for Light Scribe)
   

My conclusion is, if you have money to burn, time to wait and have an artistic taste, why not use the Label Flash and Light Scribe. For other who have better things to do with their money and time, a normal blank disc is overall a better choice. In my opinion, disc are only used for storing data files, not a decoration.

Things to do when your hard disk crashed

2 days ago, my sis' computer crashed and wouldn't boot into windows no matter what. I tried using safe mode to get inside and it failed too. I thought maybe some virus got inside so I get my windows xp installation disc to reinstall the OS (mind you, not reformat the whole drive).
After a while, the setup stopped and inform me that the hard drive had errors. Guess it's about time the hard drive died anyway, since it has been in our service for 10 years. But what about the precious files inside? photos, songs, videos? can't i retrieve them? Yes, you can, provided that the files are not located in your damaged sector.
Here are the steps to get back your files:

1. Get a external hard disk drive or pendrive to store your files
2. Go to ubuntu, download the latest image file and burn it (using your families' or friends' computer)
3. Once finished, insert it to your crashed hard disk computer's dvd/cd-drive.
4. Set the boot priority to cd-rom in BIOS.
5. When you are inside ubuntu, copy all your important files to your other drive.
6. Reboot and you are done!

This is how I get back my sis files the cheap way. If you have any other ideas or recommendation, please leave your comments.
If your computer is really really old, you can check out my Hardware Rig: November PC Configuration for making your own new computer.

5 Essential Freewares for Your Computer

Sometimes I compressed some files in 7zip format and my friends can't open it. Also, when their computer starting to crawl like snail they ask me is it virus or something like that. Blah blah blah.
So here I decide to introduce some software for my readers. If you have better recommendation, please leave your comment.

1. 7-zip : This utilitiy allows you to open multiple format such as RAR, ZIP, 7Z, ISO, GZIP and etc. It also allows you to compressed into 7Z and ZIP format, but I hightly recommend the 7Z format as it is the one of the most efficient compressor (the other being RAR).
2. Paint.NET : Wanted to do some refinement to your pictures but without the complexity of Adobe Photoshop? Paint.Net have layers function and other effects such as sharpen, red-eye removal and soften. If you are not satisfied with the effect provided, you can download plugins to add more effect. Need some questions answer? Head over to the forum to get guides or help.
3. Auslogics Disk Defrag : This defrager helps maintain your computer speed by making the files less fragmented. After you use your computer for a while, you might noticed your computer a bit slow. This is because all your files all cluttered together, thus making the harddrive having a hard time finding the pieces of your file.
4. Google Chrome : If you are tired of Internet Explorer slow rendering speed, you can choose Chrome to browse the web as it has the fastest java rendering speed and open up quite fast too. It has a crash sandbox system, means that you can kill the site that has crash while leaving other sites intact.
5. Irfanview : The Microsoft's own Picture and Fax Viewer might be good enough for someone, but surely not all. With Irfanview, you can convert picture formats, play movies and sounds(with plugins) while maintaining the open speed.

That's all for now. I still have other software that I wanted to introduce. Till next time~