In my case I use the winXP home machine in the front room for my 'sandbox' on things I'm in the slightest doubt about doing on my main system- (the daughter gave it to my wife because she couldn't accept a bad stick of RAM was the entire problem, and I have the factory restore disc for it and thus I can reset it fast) and I watch installations with every tool I've found.
the data that made me postulate this was a bugfixable release was that the registered owner in the 'about' box tracked with the 'owner' of the OS on the machine- not giveawayoftheday, not blank, and no activation.exe or SN. <shrug>
I need more memory to run a proper virtual machine, (best is 512mb) but having a box to experiment with is the next best thing...
I tend to experiment a lot, since with a few exceptions (womble mpeg wizard dvd, I *knew* I wanted as I had years of troubleshooting it over the phone and a local copy I could figure out where gary went wrong- Better JPEG after I used it the first time (I try to stay as close to my original photo as I can aside for cropping for effect- lossless of course), online armor++ looks good, but the year expiration will see me back to avast, etc.) the items I grab are on the fringe of my interest footprint. And even the cheap ones are beyond my budget.
Zoner is sorta like that- Sounded good, but I already have and am used to working with an array of programs that work most excellently for all the jobs it can do and then some- multi-row 50+ gigapixel panoramas for example.
the last time I tried a trial version, it didn't streamline my workflow appreciably, and if it died this time I didn't lose anything but download time. it'd still be on the main box for however long I wished to experiment with it. (having 500 gigs of extra HDD space on the main box doesn't hurt)
Kinda interesting to see how things are locked from the average user, and I figure the usual rules apply- watch your back, don't whine if you bust something, and try not to babble yourself into trouble. I bust a lotta stuff. :)
I figured relaying a 'update looks ok from here' wouldn't be against the rules.
anyone else get hammered by the H1N1 vaccine? heck, I think I'm gonna make that a new topic. I'm still reeling a month later.
hello to all, and god knows I hope your new year's going better than mine!