The Magnifying Glass Pro utility is a virtual magnifier that enables you to enlarge text and graphics as they are displayed on your computer monitor.Comments on:

By: BrotherBryce

BrotherBryce — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 08:38:30 +0000

Once again, thanks to GAOTD for supplying us with this great Giveaway! Also, thanks to Workers Collection for participating!

#1. For those of you who somehow CONTINUOUSLY tell us that Windows XP has a magnifier built in… Don’t you think those of us who like this program already KNOW that? I’ve been using XP’s magnifier out of necessity, but it’s a very annoying program to use. Maybe you should try it. Try the XP version, and then try this. There IS no comparison.

#2. If you don’t need a magnifier, don’t rag on about this one, because you aren’t one who can make a valid assessment of what is necessary for this program to be functional. For instance, today GAOTD is offering an RSS Feed Creator… I have no use for such a thing, and wouldn’t know the first thing about it, so I won’t be downloading the program OR making any comments about it.

#3. I’m not visually impaired — I do wear eyeglasses, but I can see very fine with them, thank you. I have 5 computers in my house, and I only use a magnifier on this one, which is hooked up to the TV, as a sort of WebTV/Entertainment computer. So I think for those people who use a PC hooked up to their TV (which is becoming more common these days as people are moving their computers into their living rooms), you know your TV doesn’t have the resolution of a regular monitor, so the magnifier makes it easy to read that fine print.

#4. For those of you worried about CPU cycles, try this: Go into the program’s settings (right-click on the icon in the system tray, and select ‘options main dialog’). That should take you to the General tab. UNCHECK “Run application at Windows startup” and CHECK “Show Glass after application start”. Now grab the shortcut that’s in your start menu for “Magnifying Glass Pro” and drag it down to your Quickstart Toolbar. Now whenever you start Windows, you’ll have the Magnifying Glass Pro icon there, if you should need it, but it’s not always resident in your system tray. If you need it, just click once on your quickstart icon, and voila! There it is. When you wanna exit, just right-click on the system tray icon and select “exit”. That way you don’t always have it running in the background.

Hope this helps.

-BrotherBryce

By: WhiteRau

WhiteRau — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 06:23:03 +0000

as an SFX designer, it’s nice to have a nifty useful tool to quickly zoom in and out. beat the living crap out of ANY zoom tool in ANY software since i can work in two resolutions at once. me likey.

By: Fubar

Fubar — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 05:27:32 +0000

#54, Techie Teri, I’m beginning to think you should drop the “Techie” moniker. “I haven’t used either program yet”–what kind of review is that? ZoomIt IS by Microsoft (and not to be confused with Zoomit technology, which they also recently bought). I’ve never been able to figure out what Microsoft’s 22,000 programmers do–virtually every facet of their technology comes from other companies which they have purchased (typically, dozens per year). The people who wrote ZoomIt know more about the internals of Windows than anyone at Microsoft, so Microsoft bought their company, and now they’re Microsoft employees. When not being used for presentations, ZoomIt functions as a part-time full-screen magnifier, which is fairly unique. Unless you have a very low-end computer with limited RAM, there’s no harm in setting ZoomIt and Magnifying Glass Pro to start with Windows (although, as with any software that uses hotkeys, you need to watch out for hotkey conflicts). Magnifying Glass Pro uses a small amount of compute during mouse motion if you have mouse-shaking enabled. Magnifiers are not just for the visually impaired.

#52, 67, 74–I’m not knocking your preference for other software, merely your comparisons with Magnifying Glass Pro. The difference between all of your suggestions and Magnifying Glass Pro is that Magnifying Glass Pro doesn’t interfere at all with your applications; i.e., you can continue to use your applications normally while the “glass” is visible, and the glass doesn’t need to be dragged. Virtual Magnifying Glass 3.3 uses a hard-coded hotkey, and has the bare beginnings of (beta) dynamic mode. None of your suggestions has even remotely the capabilities that Magnifying Glass Pro has (although they may have some features which Magnifying Glass Pro lacks).

By: John

John — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 03:29:32 +0000

It will be better to buy a real magnifying glass than pay for this. SO you can use it all over the house.

(would really come in handy, if you are childish or older 75+)

hehehe, this must be a laugh, well really no joking, i hope its something better tomorow. thanks.

By: William

William — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 02:57:20 +0000

Thanks for those who listed alternatives; will check out later, but this one looks really good to be as someone who teaches class at a small local blind association. They don’t have an Internet connection, but I downloaded the trial version before I had a class today and the students enjoyed it. The price is not bad compared to MAGic and ZoomText, the major players.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 02:28:33 +0000

The point that is being missed in the comparison with MS magnifier and this program is that the quality of the magnified image isn’t any better. Okay yes, this program is more “functional”; but, it isn’t any easier to read the results then with MSoft.

I am not a cubist. Reading the digitised text (or typing with it) is simply the same or more eye-strain than using the smaller text. The program seriously needs better smoothing to be high quality software. Thanks.

By: dr

dr — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 02:27:17 +0000

Hmm, I have skimmed the listing of comments and no one seems to have noticed…but when this giveaway was like 2 minutes old it had 198 thumbs up ratings…seems a bit odd to me.

(back to your regularly scheduled program)

By: Jahala

Jahala — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 02:13:13 +0000

For Ed #68: there is a place in Options>General where you can uncheck the “Run Application on Windows Startup.” Then, the program will not use any resources until you choose to launch it.

Most programs have this turn-off feature. If one doesn’t and you still want to keep the program but not have it load at startup, click on Start>Run and type msconfig and press OK. In the msconfig dialog box, select the Startup tab, find the program in question and uncheck it.

By: Candi

Candi — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 01:38:28 +0000

Several months ago, I accidentally stumbled upon the GAOTD. I have enjoyed several of the software packages, many I skipped over. I usually read the comments and get upset that people would get as nasty as the do, even when receiving “free” software. If you don’t like it, don’t download it!

As for the Magnifying glass program – Thank you for allowing us to try it. I just installed it on my laptop, and it works for what I need. I am neither blind nor have eye problems! I have arthritis and cannot hold a large laptop, so I bought a small 12 inch laptop and some email, etc on the internet is so small I cannot read it. So I also use Mozilla Firefox and it’s great TEXT magnifier, but it doesn’t magnify graphics. I love to read comics daily and Firefox cannot magnify these. Magnifying Glass does!

I know that Microsoft has a built in magnifier but I have yet to find it.

Thanks again for the software.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 23:59:19 +0000

Windows XP does offer a magnifying glass, BUT the magnified image shows up in a small corner on the left side of your control bar -
It is a very weak substitute for this program -

Many of you who say YOU THINK that XP offers something like this have obviously not tried to use it because you would understand how bad it was.

I will certainly try this alternative out -