It's Alive!

[drcpunk]

Or at least revivified undead, I suppose. My laptop has been restored to factory condition. mnemex did something to make her willing to go on the Internet without a flakey cable. And, while I'm thinking that maybe naming her after Jessica Rabbit might not have been the best idea, I'm keeping that name for her.

I've got a lot of the programs I use downloaded again, though not all of them yet, and I've not set them back up. I also need to get my old wallpaper back, a lovely picture of the universe with galaxies and things. Hopefully, I remembered to back that up in one of my folders labeled something brilliantly original, like "images" or "photos".

The power button is still amazingly sensitive. Stand by is odd. I set it to stand by yesterday after the restore, put it away, and twenty minutes later, heard it singing the "I'm on fully, but currently neglected" music it plays. So, I turned the laptop fully off. I'll have to experiment.

Things I'd like to find:

Something as good as Textpad, but freeware. Failing that, my old authorization for Textpad, as I did actually pay for an early version of it.

Something free in the way of anti-virus protection that isn't as obnoxious as Norton.

Comments

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

http://www.textpad.com/support/lostlicense.html

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Well, we shall see -- None of my current edresses are correct for their database, but I sent them an email with my information, including which 3-year period I had to have purchased it in.

[mylescorcoran]

What is it about Textpad that you like particularly? There are plenty of freeware text editors out there that might scratch the same itch.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

A combination of things, and I'm sure something can duplicate it.
It does pretty colors and formatting for html and perlscripts.
It can do line numbers.
It has options for a lot of sidebars that I often find useful, like one showing which documents I have open. I think the latest version offers tabs for documents.
It can search for regexps.
For some reason, it doesn't seem to generate ASCII text for Lee Gold, and I'm not sure why -- I want a text editor that really does keep something in ASCII. Mind, I'm not sure if this is TextPad's fault, as opposed to Open / Star Office, or whatever my computer might have been doing oddly.

[mylescorcoran]

Did you get the license working for Textpad in the end?

Lifehacker did a top five on text editors not that long ago and it looks like Notepad++ is a good free editor. Someone in the comment thread suggested that Textpad is essentially free now if you ignore the nag prompts.

There are links to each of the five editors in the article I mentioned above.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Not yet. I'll take a look at the Lifehacker piece.

[jl8e]

I guess it was Windows eating its brains after all. I'm surprised, but yay.

(I suppose it might have been corruption to the drivers for the motherboard. It'd explain the wide-ranging failures.)

Now get windows patched up ASAP. You're a few gazillion critical security patches behind.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Okay, how do I do that?

[jl8e]

IIRC, in the big chunk of wasted space on the left of the window you get when you open a folder, there's something about System/Windows Update. Use it.

[jl8e]

My mistake -- it's only in the wasted space on the left of the control panel window.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Actually, no, it's in the lower right hand corner, in the task bar. But I think we're updated.

[sammywol.livejournal.com]

Ha! Not bad, just made that way huh? Long may she reign anyway.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Basically, yeah.