Seems that the program do not whant to run insatalling it I ahd no problem running it was a problem

loaded it, used it. Se no purpose.. deleted it..

I see a number of comments comparing this with Magnifying Glass Pro and comments related to web browsing. There is no one best magnifier; the best one is the best one for you. There is a lot of overlap in the option sets for Magic Lens Max and Magnifying Glass Pro, and there are a number of differences. On the whole, Magnifying Glass Pro is much more powerful. MLM uses a magnifying mode which can significantly interfere with your application's use of the mouse and keyboard. MGP was intentionally designed to avoid interference with running applications, which is why it uses profiles and command mode, and has few hotkeys. They both can be activated/deactivated via clicking their tray icons, via their tray icons' context menus, via hotkeys, and MGP also supports mouse-shake activation/deactivation for the glass and command mode, as well as keys combined with mouse movement for command mode. They both support various effects, gamma/contrast modes (note that this can result in the colors which comprise ClearType text being accentuated), smoothing, rotation, etc. MLM can capture to a file, MGP can capture to the clipboard, with various options. MGP supports manual and auto-switching of profiles.

#77, Dusty, performance issues are specific to your hardware/software environment and the settings which you use. With MLM's default refresh rate (I could increase it, of course), MGP's performance is smoother on my system.

Web browsing: IE7 supports whole-page zoom (embedded controls such as Flash may or may not zoom, depending on their settings), and IE has long supported MHTML saving/viewing. Under Internet Options, General tab, Appearance, you can use Colors, Fonts, and Accessibility to control how web pages are displayed. Under the Advanced tab, there are more Accessibility and other display options. By the way, as the new giveaway at the time of this post deals with spelling correction, Google Toolbar 5 beta, presently only for IE, supports spell checking, web page searching, notebook clipping, bookmarks, autolink, autofill, etc.

I'll keep Magic Lens Max, but Magnifying Glass Pro and Microsoft Sysinternals Zoomit (fast static full-screen and presentation use) will remain my primary magnifiers. Actually, since my XP box is half-dead and I had to buy a new computer, it has an NVidia card, which doesn't support the high resolutions that the ATI card in my XP box supported. I may switch to using my 1920x1200 LCD as my primary monitor, and magnification is of little value with it, since I can easily see the individual pixels. I did notice MLM doesn't support multiple monitors well. Before I uninstalled it from my Vista box due to a lack of compatibility, I noticed it has the common problem of popping up dialog boxes split across the monitors (I didn't drag the magnifying glass to the other monitor since it didn't work under Vista anyway).

It works under Vista, but not with Aero enabled.
And it should not be big surprise. Most of good video players cannot use overlay and many other advanced functions with Aero on. Many thanks giveaway-a-day and developers for this program. It is in my list to get few copies for the office (and I will do it), but getting extra for personal use and testing is very nice present.
For those that love to criticize - just try to code something similar. And, yes, it cannot magnify DreamScene desktop when it is running ;-)). Just kidding.
Thanks.

Re: *12*

I can relate to your comments about those #!@@#**! web pages that put dark blue lettering on black backgrounds!)

If you use Internet Explorer, then you might find IE Surfgear comes to your rescue. Its a free IE add-on, which adds three additional buttons to IE's toolbar. It allows you to reset text colours to avoid this problem, and also provides the means to remove annoying background textures, as well as making fixed fonts sizeable.

http://www.sofmos.com/IeSurfgear.html

Got it just in time. Downloaded and I LOVE it. It is great , so much better than the Pro 1.5. It will be so handy. Thank you GAOTD!!!

It looks to be an exellent software

since i have macular degeneration this program is life saving for me
i give it *****

Wow, love it on my tiny 5" touchscreen Sony U750P, running XP SP2, 1.1GHz, 512 MB RAM. Tap to turn on/off makes this a winner for UMPCs without a keyboard. If the time comes that I have to rebuild my system, this app seems a requirement for this PC, will buy it. Thanks much, GOTD and VisionSuit.

Works perfect on my XP SP2. Wonderful. Thumbs up. Thanx GAOTD!

Works really well on my computer. It can zoom quite well without losing too much quality.

Thanks for another great program GAOTD!!!

Installed it! Used it! Loved it!!
Thanks!

I don't know as much as I'd like to about my computer or how it works, or rather what the problem is when it doesn't, but I still downloaded this anyway - EVEN after reading some of the trouble comments. I'm glad I took my chances, cause this thingy is too much cool! No problems here with downloading, registering with info given, and then using the magifier. I don't know when I might have a need for this, but can't wait to use it cause I have it!

Thanks GAOTD for Another Great Freebie!

To #74 - Cathy - If you are having problems with downloading and unzipping files, I can recommend two things.

Firstly - If not already, investigate using a "download manager" such as Free Download Manager or Orbit Downloader. Either will allow you to download files and ensure that the entire file comes down, if the download cuts out early you can resume from the point where the download terminated early.

Secondly - Use 7-Zip to unzip files instead of "Alzip"

I like it.
I`ll Keep it.
No problem on XP SP2
The enhancement view is a help for very small photos.
For general use I still use Firefox page zoom add on. or text size, and sometimes shift and (+) or ctrl and (+).
I do get upset when a Firefox version change stops either from working.

AND another thing the download link breaks quite often in the early part of the giveaway,and asks for a username and password. The only remedy I have found is to clear internet cache and start a new download.

Magic Lens Max good enough for me.

The Grouser

MagicLens Max deserves a thumbs up.
I have a GEForece 7300 Card and yes it has a very good magnifier. A plus for it is that the amount of text amount of magnified text is greater. However, Magic Lens has a few tricks it does that make it a very nice edition to my applications.
And... As a Web Designer, MagicLens will help in my designing for accessibility. That is it will allow me to see how my web pages layout, text and graphics will render for those who must use some sort of magnification to view a web page.
One response indicated that it did not work well on a dual monitor set up. I have dual monitors which uses the added software Ultramon. MagicLens works on either screen without any problems.

Thank GAOTD & Vision Suite Software.

Not work with my Vista.

Another grat little program kindly sought out by the good people of GOAD.

A Question to the GOAD Moderator:

Why the change from Wikifortio to Wikisend?

I for one found Wikisend very useful because it listed exactly what files we would find inside the download, which was good for virus testing, for example whether an extra activator program had been included in the download or not. Wikifortio was especially useful on the odd occasion when GOAD offered a ''resend'' or updated the program available later in the 24 hours (usually after complaints), because you could compare details of the Wikifortio page against the time/date of the release downloaded (especially useful when someone was not using a program like GetRight which showed the time/date of the file and not the time it as downloaded.

IMHO I'd prefer going back to Wikifortio.

Works fine on my XP SP2 laptop.
Pros:
Very versatile tool with many options.
Mouse-wheel zoom especially useful; gamma and resampling options unusual.
Quick and easy screen capture, for directory listings, etc.
Minor Cons:
Moderate memory usage (30.940K).
Should be a quick way to turn lens off without having to migrate image down to system tray.

If you use this tool everyday, the price is not unreasonable

Will test on Vista machine.

Cathy, hope this comment is of some help for you.

Have you tried using the Mirror1 just under the primary download option.

Re # 12 problem and others with the same problem, "but even so, I still sometimes require some visual help. (Especially with these #!@@#**! web pages that put dark blue lettering on black backgrounds!)"

I've had the same problem with yellow on white pages. If you go into IE explorer Tools, then Internet Options, then down in the bottom left-hand corner you will see COLORS...click on this. Depending on the version of IE explorer (if you are using this) you can change the font color, background color, etc. You might have to click off the "use windows colors" box to get to this.

Oh, I capitalized the word colors to emphasize the name...not shout at any one.

Hope this helps.

The VisionSuiteSoftware produced a very cool desktop environment no longer in their site. Probably they put all the know-how in this great magnifier! I'm very happy to keep a copy of VisionSuite 1.0 + from now the MagicLensMax ((AW you can'use any kind of transparency in the task bar + you can't magnify any dock application)

In regards to comment # 4 by bubby. I took the comment ZA "Fellow Giveaway benefactors, if you have the previous Giveaway of Magnifying Glass Pro 1.5, DO NOT install this one" to mean if you already had magnifying Glass Pro, don't bother with today's offer, as today's offer has is not an improvement over it. Frankly I decided that after visiting the web page for today's offer. Yes in this context beneficiaries would be the correct word. However GAOTD and the software providers must benefit as well or they are poor business persons. To give this post some redeeming value, I have found Magnify 1.2 to be a huge improvement over Windows resident magnifier, it's free and it's installation takes up only 376 KB (385,093 bytes) of HD space download it at http://wareseeker.com/Web-Development/magnify-1.2.zip/64069

I'm very pleased with Magic Lens Max. It works better for me than our last similar GAOTD (Magnifying Glass Pro) in many ways.

The biggest problem I had with MGP was the lens shook when I moved the mouse, which gave me a headache and made me slightly motion sick. Magic Lens does not have this problem, the lens moves smoothly and as a result it's much easier to read the print, and the focus stays even and clear. Very important for me. It even works with my graphics programs, which was a major disappointment for me with MGP.

The cursor moves smoothly without shaking and is of the normal size (with options to change that as needed.) The cursor on MGP was too difficult to control, and was one of the main reasons I couldn't use MGP on my graphics programs. I had no such difficulties with Magic Lens - I was able to manipulate small details easily. A huge difference!

Not having mouse shaking capabilities is not a problem for me. I actually found the mouse shaking to be more trouble than it was worth in the long run.

I like the color options, although I doubt I'll use them often. I have a widget that takes the color out of internet pages - leaving a white background with black print and blue links, which helps a great deal with the richly saturated colors that I find difficult to read. The control + mouse wheel zooming is a great advantage for me - very good move. I also really like the Gamma Level options, as I have trouble with dark screens.

There are two disadvantages to Magic Lens that make me think I'll keep MGP around as a backup. No option for magnifying the entire page - which would be very, very useful for me. And the profiles MGP offers. You can set up separate profiles for different uses, making it easy to slip into another use of the program...I could have one profile for when I was reading, and a different one for using my word processor, without having to manually change the settings to conform to my needs.

In the long run, I have to say the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. I'll be using Magic Lens for my daily magnifying use, and save MGP for a few specialized needs that may pop up.

If the developers are paying attention to our comments, hopefully they'll pick up on these two ideas...especially the full page magnifying options - that would be of tremendous advantage to me as a user.

Thanks GAOTD and VisionSuit Software for an excellent download today.

Dusty

As a teacher who has to drag his own laptop into the classroom sometimes, I thought I would share a couple of useful “out of the box thinking” applications I discovered with Magic Lens Max:

1. Use as a giant mouse pointer for presentations. – If you set the lens size to ellipse at the smallest size, 64 X 64 pixels, and change the magnification to 100% (no magnification), you get a large circle that follows your mouse pointer around, making it easy for everyone to see your pointer.
2. If your eyesight makes it hard to see the mouse pointer, this same approach can be a good alternative to changing the default mouse pointer used by Windows – some applications don’t work well with custom pointers or ignore them altogether.
3. Reduce the size of your screen. – For example, one classroom has a projector with the wrong lens for the room on it – the display goes over the edges of the screen. If you have a 1024X768 display, and set the lens size to rectangle at 788 (768+10+10) by 596 (576+10+10) pixels (remember, the smallest border size is 10 pixels), and change the magnification to 75%, you can get a centered shrunken display that will show the entire image on the small screen while your mouse pointer is exactly centered. Likewise, if you set the lens size for the full screen size, 1024 X 768 pixels, and reduce magnification below 100%, you can fine tune adjust the magnification ratio for best display – however, the larger the lens size, the more sluggish the program becomes, so the first technique works better on slower machines. So as long as you aren’t moving the mouse pointer, this works great.

Some problems discovered:

1. Vista compatibility – ‘nuff said.
2. The lens sometimes disappears if you Alt-Tab an application over top of an application that has the lens focus – move around the mouse to relocate the lens.
3. If you have a heavily loaded startup, you may have noticed that some system tray icons don’t appear when booting and vanish whenever Windows Explorer decides to reinitialize itself (or you terminate it) - known XP bug. Magic Lens Max has a bad habit of being prone to vanishing, so don’t load on startup.
4. You can set the vertical lens size to be greater than the visible screen size but not the horizontal lens size. Doesn’t seem to understand virtual screen sizes too well (see next point also).
5. Doesn’t seem to like my dual screen setup – only works on the primary screen, secondary screen either has the lens vanish as it crosses over or causes screen update failure (i.e. loose the mouse pointer completely). Could be it doesn’t like the older S3 video chipset.
6. Doesn’t work well with the simultaneous TV out either (the autoscrolling 640X480 output tends to flicker badly, exaggerate movements and makes it impossible to move slowly) – I suspect that writing screen updates by Magic Lens Max collides with the video card’s varying frame scanning.

Overall, a great utility if you have XP, especially for those older folks with deteriorating vision.

Thanks Giveaway of the Day & VisionSuit!

By the way, the laptop I bring to school when required is a modified PIII 500 MHz unit running XP pro SP2! So yes, if you are careful, you can get some of these older systems to keep purrin’ along – just don’t throw IE7, high-def WMV or large, fully compressed NTFS drives at it.

Hey #49, thanks SOOO much for your post. I am running Vista Home Premium on a Sony laptop...and after initial install had the same problem as most others, but changing to the windows classic theme sorted it all out. From what I'm seen so far it works great! A+.

I really hate to try to commet here as I am not sure this is the right place again but each time I have tried to download something from here my computer freezes up and I have had SUCH a terrible time no matter what I try. I have tried what you have suggested to me and nothing has worked. I have the alzip thing and that too just does nothing but give me headaches....I thought todays giveaway was so easy that it could not possibly cause a problem and I cannot believe it too is sitting in Alzip and it says "Error, this file format cannot be extracted and it is unknown".....I just give up!!!! Guys~what on earth am I doing wrong here??? I have tried all you suggest in your forums and have spent hours reading your colums each night and leave so unhappy and end up with such a mess on my computer and having to delete and delete and barely saving my poor puter and somtimes I swear I am not sure what I am gonna wake up to the next morning!!!! HELP!!!! I really wanted this silly program today as recently my eyes are needing some help from too many hours sitting here and I KNOW it cannot be that hard to get this silly program downloaded for Petes' sake!!!!
Thanks for your help!
Cathy

Very impressive. Fully functioning and functional on my XP. As some have noted, it's very intuitive and well thought-out. In active use, it uses about 15% CPU, uses zero CPU when not in use (duh, but not true with some programs). The screen magnifier built into XP quickly makes things pixillated and grainy; not so with Magic Lens Max. It's not something I'll use often, but a definite keeper for those times I need to carefully review portions of images, particularly text in scanned documents, maps and GIS images.

I have downloaded and installed Magic Lens Max with no problem and it works great on Windows XP pro, this is he bst magnifying program I have seen and used so far with all of its features. Iwould highly recomend this one and give it a thumbs up, thanks GAOTD and keep up the good work.

1. I find the program pretty good. For example, it smooths out images better than many other cheap ones, but probably not as well as the $200+ ones for those with really poor eyesight.
2. It works better if you open and close the magnifier with a hotkey. See the configuration option. Also works better if you initially set the magnificaon to 1 if you show the magnifier frame before you actually want to magnify something. (Use shft-ctrl-up/down arrows to change magnification.) I haven't found a way so set the default magnifition to 1x, however.
3. If this or other programs are running slowly, you should first clean out temp files, then check what programs are running at startup (Windows has a utility for this, or Google Mike Lin to find his free utilities, one of which will warn you when something tries to put itself in startup--very useful). If still problems, defrag hard disk. Then check for firewall leak, virus/trojan/spyware.

Loaded without any problems on XP SP2, and runs perfectly with absolute ease. Much nicer than the Windows magnifier, a definite keeper this one! Well done GOTD.

FANTASTIC - 2 files in the most previous Magnifying Giveaway took a hike on me - evidently when I had to manually turn my computer off about 2 weeks ago and I have been without that useful tool. I have been hoping you would run an update to that - or bring aboard another Magnifier soon for my old eyes! Gratefully thankful for these programs. Laurie

Using Vista Ultimate with an Intel 965 graphics chip. Though the licensing in setup says it supports Vista (discrepancy with #36), I am getting the black dot infinite zoom reported by the others. This seems to be a nice product. Hopefully the developer will fix this and the GOTD will offer it again. (As a developer, I know Vista is a pain. Good luck.) For now, I'm uninstalling and not rating it.

This got a minus by me as to be pointless to my usage as quality to
make small images big was not really as good as I thought and I can
as well resize it in PSP or PS.
But for someone with bad eyes I can see a good use of this software
as it will make it easy for them to read small text.
So to conclude my sum up of the software I would say that this software
is for them with bad eyes (then it are good) but for a user that want
small image to big images it do not work that good for that...
Something to improve that Idea would be to first make it set not
to capture the outside of an image (an alternative to set an frame)
also would be nice if it had a bit more Filters as this filters in it
was not enough to keep the quality in the picture after an resize
(I know though that one can edit a small picture just so far
before it turning Pixi) but a bit better could be possible with a
bit more work with this program I believe (the Idea are good though)
Would be cool if the future could bring an Zoom machine like that
one in the movie Blade Runner.
Anyhow....this is Good software idea that probably work for them
with bad eye site but need a lot more work to make it useful
for other users as well I believe.

There's a program you can buy for less than $10.00 that really beats this one IMHO, namely WebEyes. It not only magnifies better than the built-in Windows feature, but it also controls text size on web pages and webmail (including forms and boxes), and it eliminates scrolling by letting you read websites like a book (my favorite feature!), etc.

i dont like this software because there is already a similar software installed in ur comp called magnifier. i think its useless

#50--why would anyone with post-'95 programs want to go down to 16 bit just to use a magnifying glass? Never again!

TO #55

To capture screen image Ctrl + Shift + C , it works well!

#4 oliviab: Apologies for your confusion and my bad English convention. But it was midnight and the computer was too slow so I ended up not rereading for mistakes. As to the statement of "previous Giveaway" I meant a different magnifier from another company offered here http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/magnifying-glass-pro-1-5/#more-2357

#47 Rick: I don't see why you post I need more RAM here and start blaming me for the lag a few moments later. It's not the RAM's problem I can run Firefox with 5 tabs, Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Powerpoint 2003, 3 different AV/ASW programs, and a cleanmgr that's compressing 5GB of old files, and still have everything lightning fast. So, something must be VERY wrong if I closed everything and the magnifier seems to stall.

#53 Rick: If you read the whole thing you would have seen that I closed all other running applications except for Magic Lens Max. Yes, that includes Firefox and all of my AV and ASW programs, because they hog memory. And let's tend to disagree on what to do if a program stalls for more than 3 minutes or so, a rare occurrence on my computer: I madly click in hopes that it stops stalling, and you do whatever you do.

To all`Vista users: Please note that Vista is still in a "beta" version testing, even though it has been released to the public. Microsoft tends to maintain a monopoly by released unfinished OS and then finishing the much needed service packs so it looks better than it is. As for the companies, they still have to analyze the Vista OS and make adjustments to their program. Which isn't an easy task. So please try not to complain, as the Vista just received SP1 for distribution, and there's already BSODs and reformatted hard drive complaints.

Right after the install finish the program launches. The Lens immediately came on and I wasn't expecting that to happen. I was startled! Now I'm thinking, great, Saturday morning, haven’t even finished my cup of coffee, I'm tired, and now I have to figure out how to turn this damn thing off!” I’m on my laptop (using a touchpad) and as I’m moving the curser the few brain cells in my head that were functioning started to marquee a command to the muscles in my hand, “tray icon”, right click, tray icon, right click…” I right-click the tray icon, a menu pops up and a sigh of relief comes over me. I am pleasantly surprised.

That’s a slick way to get somebody to right out of the box see how easy it is to use their program. The Help file is organized and well written. Many times the help files on these newer programs are no help at all. They can be poorly written (assuming a level of understanding), the grammar can be horrible, instructions riddled with misspells; there is no excuse today for publishing any documentation with misspelled words in an interface. That is not the case with this program. Definite thumbs up! Nice work.

Excellent tool, well done GOTD. Thanx

Downloaded, it installed with no problems on XP Pro, and registration was a breeze. It works very well, and it's a definite keeper.

Only one fly in the ointment: there's no way I'd pay $40 for this program; maybe $20 at most... But I'll enjoy it while I can. Thanks, VisionSuit Software and GOTD! ;-)

never mind lol
Thanks #16!!!!!!!!!! :) (Dan)
¤Possible to capture picture(CTRL-Shift-C).
Greattttttttttttttttttttttttt give away GOATD :)

I was sadly disappointed by the application once I ran it on Vista. The progam seems to atempt this bottomless-pit-zoom which I could not stop, and the controls noted in the help file don't solve the problem. I've seen the comments above, and while I could jump through all of those hoops and reconfigure my desktop, why would I do that just to run a magnifier?
Having said that, I am really excited to see what this app can do on my XP desktop, so I am going to install it there next.
Thanks to GAOTD and the developers for this offering!

hey i was wondering....how do you save a zoomed image?
it's possible right?

installed perfectly fine. looks like a nice program, running vista, no problems thus far.

thanks for the great title.

#1 everything you did was your own fault! You NEVER madly click buttons like you did. btw, firefox normally uses that much memory. you froze your own computer!!!

Quote # 7

Good product. However…..anyone with an NVIDIA card won’t need this as a similar (and I dare say better) feature is in the nView Desktop Manager. So if you have any newer NVIDIA drivers installed, you already have this program….

I want to thank you,OTM. for that information. I have been using the NVidia TI. 200 card for years and never knew about this feature until I just read your post which I have quoted at the top part of my post.
You just taught me a good lesson. I can't thank you enough. Now I am off to play with my new old toy Lol.
Thank you also GAOTD. team. See ya tomorrow.

Hello All,

I have XP2 with only 512mg RAM and it downloaded, installed and runs with no problems at all. I LOVE this program! It works well and on my system anyway - cleanly. I am an older man with minor Glaucoma and this is VERY useful to me. Thank you so much for bringing here today. The ability to take screen shots easily of the enlarged area is something I have needed for awhile now and could not find an easy way to do it.

Thank You Again,
Michael

ATTENTION OFTEN NEGLEGTED VISTA OWNERS

I found that if you drop down to 16 bit from 32, it will work. Give it a try.