David Barrett
Downloads: 753
Posts: 51
Smile Score: +100 
About Me
I am a MacUpdate Desktop user
Gender: Male
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Member Since: 03 Jun 2006
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I am a MacUpdate Desktop user Gender: Male
Visit Stats
Last Visit: Today
Member Since: 03 Jun 2006
Profile Views: 1,560
David Barrett's Posts
Average Rating from David:
(16)
(16) 
Displaying 1-10 of 29
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+5
SixtyFour
I then went and changed those of my most frequently used apps to 32-bit mode, just to see what happened.
Memory usage has been lowered significantly. Other than that, not much to report about performance, one way or the other, except …
Photoshop CS5 is much snappier on the startup in 32-bit mode. Why? Who knows? Who cares? It now uses less memory and starts faster.
Downside for this developer is that I did this using Get Info and clicking "Run in 32-bit mode" for those apps that offered the option – took me all of a few minutes – so I'm not going to part with my cash.
That's not to say, however, that others might well find this app beneficial, in terms of time savings, or just because they're not 100% sure of what they're doing otherwise. I'm not saying to buy it or not. What I am saying is that the process it is designed to carry out has been of benefit to me, even if I didn't use this app to carry out that process.
[MacBook Pro 2.53 Intel Core Duo, 4 GB RAM, OS X 10.7.2]
OS Track
Stickman67 reviewed on 15 Oct 2011
The latest version is pretty good, in the sense that it does what it says it should and gives a useful record of which apps have been using most RAM, CPU, and so on. It's helped me to skinny up my running gear so that my CPU usage runs at a much lower average, and my computer seems more responsive on the whole. (I use the word "seems" deliberately, because I haven't benchmarked anything so it's a subjective feeling that things are a bit zippier.)
Having said that, one of the bits of running gear I've ditched is OS Track itself. It still uses a little too much CPU for comfort. But each time it's been updated so far it's improved, so I'm looking forward to the next version to see how that goes. I suspect that eventually this may get to the point where I can leave it running constantly.
Keep going, developer! You're getting closer every time!
MailSteward
Stickman67 reviewed on 06 Sep 2011
It's really reassuring to know that every once in a while I can delete six months worth of email out of Mail to clear out the cobwebs and keep it ticking over smoothly, but the archiving is already done. So all of my invoices, software serials, business communications, and so on, are still there for me to access, without me having to take anything more than set up MailSteward once, then let it do its thing. The first run takes a while, and after that it goes much more quickly.
It really has been, for me, set and forget.
The main negative for me is speed of searching. Searching the archive for the first time after MailSteward boots up is slow. I'm talking minutes, not seconds. But everything's relative, and I have quite a lot of email in that database by now. I hope the dev can find some way to make that work better.
On the whole, however, this app has proven the best for me, and I've tried a few.
(MacBook Pro 2.53, 4GB RAM, OS X 10.7.1)
+4
Parallels Desktop
Stickman67 reviewed on 03 Sep 2011
To me, this now feels like I'm working on a Windows computer, not just an emulator with the ever-so-slight time lags every time I do something. Not a V8 by any means, but on my MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz with 4 GB RAM, it now feels much more real. It also requires about 0.5 GB less RAM to run the same Win OS and apps – and that probably helps the overall responsiveness, too, because I'm not running my Mac on the edge of its RAM capacity any more.
Switching between Mac and Windows also seems a lot quicker. And so far, touch wood, very stable, too (although that's been the case through the past couple of versions, in my experience).
In short, those little lags that used to make PD feel a little bit less than a real Win7 computer seem largely to have disappeared, for me at least.
+1
GeoGebra
Stickman67 reviewed on 28 Aug 2011
Another major benefit is that I can create shapes (e.g. triangles for trigonometry) and then export them in graphics formats that I can import into MS Word and other apps. Terrific for creating information sheets, worksheets and quizzes.
Overall, a very powerful tool and well worth the time to learn to use.
Highly recommended.
Skitch
Stickman67 reviewed on 18 Aug 2011
Then there are the quick screenshots to show them how to do stuff, or to show them where things are (complete with big red arrows), or ...
In short, in my e-learning environment this has proved to be the best of class of this type of software for me – pun intended!
The only thing I'm slightly irritated about is that I paid for it. But hey, you have to roll with the punches, right? I reckon it paid for itself!
Sapiens
Stickman67 reviewed on 30 Jun 2011
It's been stable and fast, and I don't find $4.99 prohibitively expensive – although admittedly many of the similar apps out there are free.
Having said that, in terms of productivity and usability, given the way I work, this is a winner for me.
+3
App Tamer
Stickman67 reviewed on 05 Apr 2011
Recommended. Do yourself a favour.
+2
VirusBarrier X6
Parallels seemed to be grinding almost to a halt, and nothing I did seemed to make it go any faster – until I had a look in Peek-A-Boo and realised what was causing the processor to bog down. Unfortunately, it was VirusBarrier.
Since I've removed VB, my Mac is very much sharper. Maybe I'll go back to VB one day and see if there's something in the settings that allows me to work around the problem, but for now I've simply removed it and plan to leave it removed. I've not seen a virus anywhere near my Mac since the days of System 7 (when there were more than enough to make life interesting if you happened to pick one up – thank you, university IT guys who didn't believe me when I told them the system was riddled until it melted down ...).
+9
iProcrastinate