Random Tech Questions you want answered.

Hmm, well, I'm not sure exactly what you're taking care of - if these are other people's PDFs that you're modifying for specific reasons, but if these are documents that you're maintaining, especially work-related stuff, I'd approach your employer about getting some kind of content editing software or suite that will let you make modifications to a document in a much more user-friendly editor and then output a PDF instead (Word will do this, but I despise Word, so I won't recommend it).

If these are documents that are coming from third parties that you have to edit in the way you're describing, I'd suggest asking your employer to get you an Adobe Creative Cloud license. It should manage everything you need with moving PDF pages around.

As far as OCR, that's a feature that I don't recall ever using in my work life. The few times I've needed something like that, I just use my phone. But I'm pretty sure Adobe software includes OCR capabilities. I am loath to recommend anything Adobe, but there are things they do right.

I have looked for something like this every now and then and everything I find is either online, or a paid yearly license. It sucks!

What about Affinity Designer or one of their other affordable Adobe clone products?
I love Affinity Designer but I cannot say one way or the other whether it does what you want it to do. It is an Illustrator clone though so it is built to handle PDFs.

fangblackbone wrote:

What about Affinity Designer or one of their other affordable Adobe clone products?
I love Affinity Designer but I cannot say one way or the other whether it does what you want it to do. It is an Illustrator clone though so it is built to handle PDFs.

I actually use and like Affinity Photo, will definitely look into it!

It seems like EaseUS PDF fits the bill as well, I will try the trial version. It still has a perpetual license, including VAT it's 100EUR. Maybe they will throw a promo code my way at some point, because that's still a bit too much. Plus it seems one license = one device and not user unfortunately.

@NSMike - I might look into talking with my manager about getting a license of some sort, but never Adobe CC

dejanzie wrote:

Oh I just mean removing or moving pages, merging PDF's, stuff like that. OCR I use mainly to make documents searchable. I know most of this can be done with online tools, but I'm suspicious of uploading PDFs somewhere unknown. Especially work-related PDFs.

I'm pretty sure I've done all that with Preview. The problem there is you have to buy a Mac or make a Hackintosh...

dejanzie wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

What about Affinity Designer or one of their other affordable Adobe clone products?
I love Affinity Designer but I cannot say one way or the other whether it does what you want it to do. It is an Illustrator clone though so it is built to handle PDFs.

I actually use and like Affinity Photo, will definitely look into it!

It seems like EaseUS PDF fits the bill as well, I will try the trial version. It still has a perpetual license, including VAT it's 100EUR. Maybe they will throw a promo code my way at some point, because that's still a bit too much. Plus it seems one license = one device and not user unfortunately.

@NSMike - I might look into talking with my manager about getting a license of some sort, but never Adobe CC

In their faq it says contact them if you're moving it to a new device and they will reset the license.

How does the YouTube TV "DVR" experience compare to others? Can you skip 30s at a time, or entire commercial breaks? Do the big 4 networks come in at full quality, bandwidth permitting? What's it like compared to cable with DVR?

Chairman_Mao wrote:
dejanzie wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

What about Affinity Designer or one of their other affordable Adobe clone products?
I love Affinity Designer but I cannot say one way or the other whether it does what you want it to do. It is an Illustrator clone though so it is built to handle PDFs.

I actually use and like Affinity Photo, will definitely look into it!

It seems like EaseUS PDF fits the bill as well, I will try the trial version. It still has a perpetual license, including VAT it's 100EUR. Maybe they will throw a promo code my way at some point, because that's still a bit too much. Plus it seems one license = one device and not user unfortunately.

@NSMike - I might look into talking with my manager about getting a license of some sort, but never Adobe CC

In their faq it says contact them if you're moving it to a new device and they will reset the license.

I currently have Foxit PDF on my desktop, personal laptop and work laptop. But having access to PDF editing on the desktop alone is more than enough. Some quick googling got me a 30% discount code, so after a few trial days I got EaseUS PDF Editor for 65EUR in the end, with lifetime upgrades. I can live with that

It actually seems a bit leaner than Foxit PDF, smaller install footprint and starts quicker. The interface feels better too, less clutter.

Thanks everyone

Kurrelgyre wrote:

How does the YouTube TV "DVR" experience compare to others? Can you skip 30s at a time, or entire commercial breaks? Do the big 4 networks come in at full quality, bandwidth permitting? What's it like compared to cable with DVR?

We've been using it for a few years. Skipping is 30s at a time which makes it very easy to skip through commercials. I haven't had any complaints with the quality, it seems to be just as good as it was with cable DVR. I am definitely a fan of it over cable DVR. Very easy to save things and they stick around for a very long time. The only issue I've had is you can have multiple versions of a show, one that's the DVR and is the whole show with commercials, and the other which is VOD which is just the show without commercials but then unskippable ads are added overtop. Accidentally starting the VOD one instead of the DVR is not a huge deal but it is annoying to have to back out and make sure you start the right version.

What compress/uncompress file tool do you all use, on Win 11?

dejanzie wrote:

Apparently the partner license key I still had for Foxit PDF has expired. What solution do you guys use as a PDF solution, with perpetual licensing, OCR and decent editing features?

Take a look at PDF-XChange Editor. I pay for the PDF-XChange Tools package.

Robear wrote:

What compress/uncompress file tool do you all use, on Win 11?

7-Zip

cheesycrouton wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

Apparently the partner license key I still had for Foxit PDF has expired. What solution do you guys use as a PDF solution, with perpetual licensing, OCR and decent editing features?

Take a look at PDF-XChange Editor. I pay for the PDF-XChange Tools package.

Hours after I bought EaseUSPDF, dammit! Seems like PDF X-Change has a user-based license, but too late now...

dejanzie wrote:

Hours after I bought EaseUSPDF, dammit! Seems like PDF X-Change has a user-based license, but too late now...

Ugh, sorry about that. Might be a good backup plan if you want to switch in the future. Hopefully EaseUSPDF will do everything you need!

What compress/uncompress file tool do you all use, on Win 11?

Cheap storage?
;P

oops, double post.

Thank you Cheesycrouton!

nah, I meant for download files Fang. Got plenty of storage lol.

Asterith wrote:
Kurrelgyre wrote:

How does the YouTube TV "DVR" experience compare to others? Can you skip 30s at a time, or entire commercial breaks? Do the big 4 networks come in at full quality, bandwidth permitting? What's it like compared to cable with DVR?

We've been using it for a few years. Skipping is 30s at a time which makes it very easy to skip through commercials. I haven't had any complaints with the quality, it seems to be just as good as it was with cable DVR. I am definitely a fan of it over cable DVR. Very easy to save things and they stick around for a very long time. The only issue I've had is you can have multiple versions of a show, one that's the DVR and is the whole show with commercials, and the other which is VOD which is just the show without commercials but then unskippable ads are added overtop. Accidentally starting the VOD one instead of the DVR is not a huge deal but it is annoying to have to back out and make sure you start the right version.

I really liked the UI and discoverability, but the VOD stuff you mentioned did annoy the crap out of me.

At one point they were also talking about automatically swapping out your DVR versions of things for the VOD versions so you'd be stuck with those unskippable commercials. Did they not do that after all? (From what you said it sounds like they didn.t)

My dad’s desktop computer is running Windows 11 on a 2TB HDD. It’s sloooooow. I’m debating trying to move his existing OS to an SSD but not likely a 2TB one. Is it going to be a giant pain to mirror things onto a smaller drive? I’m not sure he wants to pay for a 2TB SSD. He barely uses any space on his current drive so it would be a waste to pay for a huge SSD.

Whenever I’ve done this with my own systems I just reinstalled the OS and everything but that seems like more of a hassle for my dad than just copying existing stuff over.

Is it easier to try reducing the size of the OS partition before mirroring?

What tools have you used successfully for this. A quick search online shows a ton of paid tools. I’m comfortable dropping to a command prompt in Linux and using dd if that would work but I don’t know what complications Windows 11 adds to the situation.

Pretty much all the desktops in the house right now run on a 240GB SSD for the OS with a larger hard drive for storage. Those things run like $20-$30 right now, it's by far the cheapest upgrade you can do to get a large performance increase out of a system.

As for migrating, that I'm not 100% on. For each of mine, I did clean installs and manually migrated over things that the kids wanted to keep. Anything lost was no big deal because they're kids. You might be able to create an image of the HDD and then install that to the SSD, or possibly clone it over even with the SSD being smaller, but I'd have to play with something like that to see how viable it is. A fresh install is almost always your best bet though.

The steps I would probably take:

Step 0. Think twice about doing this, rather than just rebuilding the system on a fresh Win11 install on the SSD.

Assuming Step 0 failed and I went ahead anyway:

Step 1. Backup any and all important data.

Step 2. Create a Restore Point in Win11.

Step 3. Uninstall as much non-essential junk as possible from the system, and then run Disk Cleanup (or I guess Win11 has Storage Sense for doing the same thing)

Step 4. Defragment the drive.

Step 5. Boot into GParted and resize the partition to be smaller than the destination drive. (Safer to set it to be clearly smaller than the destination drive rather than trying to line up an exact match and end up still being larger than the drive by a slight amount.)

Step 6. Boot back into Windows to confirm that the OS install is still working after the partition change (and confirm that you are in fact seeing the drive's smaller size within Windows)

Step 7. Boot into Clonezilla and take an image of the existing drive, storing the image on an external drive.

Step 8. Shutdown and swap the SSD into place.

Step 9. Boot into Clonezilla again, restore the image to the newly installed drive, using the "-k1" (resize partition to use the full available disk space) and the "-r" (resize filesystem to fill the partition) options.

Step 10. Boot into the restored OS, confirm functionality and disk size.

If things aren't working at this point, you still have the OS intact on the original drive, which you confirmed in Step 6 is still working. You can try restoring again, try taking a new image of the original drive, try using a backup/imaging software package other than Clonezilla, etc.

Optional step:

Step 0.5. Boot into Clonezilla and take a backup image of the unmodified drive, prior to doing any uninstalling/resizing/defragging. The maximum safety option.

PurEvil wrote:

manually migrated over things that the kids wanted to keep. Anything lost was no big deal because they're kids.

Tell that to my 29 year old X-Wing original save file.

Stele wrote:
PurEvil wrote:

manually migrated over things that the kids wanted to keep. Anything lost was no big deal because they're kids.

Tell that to my 29 year old X-Wing original save file. :D

Stele: "I'm not doing the f--king Disable the Transport mission ever again!"

pandasuit wrote:

My dad’s desktop computer is running Windows 11 on a 2TB HDD. It’s sloooooow. I’m debating trying to move his existing OS to an SSD but not likely a 2TB one. Is it going to be a giant pain to mirror things onto a smaller drive? I’m not sure he wants to pay for a 2TB SSD. He barely uses any space on his current drive so it would be a waste to pay for a huge SSD.

Whenever I’ve done this with my own systems I just reinstalled the OS and everything but that seems like more of a hassle for my dad than just copying existing stuff over.

Is it easier to try reducing the size of the OS partition before mirroring?

What tools have you used successfully for this. A quick search online shows a ton of paid tools. I’m comfortable dropping to a command prompt in Linux and using dd if that would work but I don’t know what complications Windows 11 adds to the situation.

Why don't you just install a 250 gb SSD with a fresh install of windows and keep the HDD as is and set is as a secondary drive? can't you just access the files on it as long as they aren't PW protected? i think you might have to disable the PW log in to your account.

FiveIron wrote:
pandasuit wrote:

My dad’s desktop computer is running Windows 11 on a 2TB HDD. It’s sloooooow. I’m debating trying to move his existing OS to an SSD but not likely a 2TB one. Is it going to be a giant pain to mirror things onto a smaller drive? I’m not sure he wants to pay for a 2TB SSD. He barely uses any space on his current drive so it would be a waste to pay for a huge SSD.

Whenever I’ve done this with my own systems I just reinstalled the OS and everything but that seems like more of a hassle for my dad than just copying existing stuff over.

Is it easier to try reducing the size of the OS partition before mirroring?

What tools have you used successfully for this. A quick search online shows a ton of paid tools. I’m comfortable dropping to a command prompt in Linux and using dd if that would work but I don’t know what complications Windows 11 adds to the situation.

Why don't you just install a 250 gb SSD with a fresh install of windows and keep the HDD as is and set is as a secondary drive? can't you just access the files on it as long as they aren't PW protected? i think you might have to disable the PW log in to your account.

That’s fine for me and what I would do if it was my computer. I’ve upgraded a lot of my own PCs to SSDs over the years and I always just install a fresh OS. I was curious if moving an OS from HDD to SSD has improved or is about the same as it used to be.

He doesn’t want to reinstall all his apps/etc. It seems like he doesn’t use cloud backups for game saves or bookmarks or anything so I’m going to have to be thorough and keep the backup around in case I missed anything. Likely enable cloud sync of a few things to make things easier in the future.

In the end I might just spend my own time reinstalling everything for him to avoid the hassle of mirroring his current OS. Just ordered him a 1TB SSD and I’m getting things ready to backup his existing drive to one of my extra HDDs before I do anything. I was at his place today gathering info and found out he’s only using 300MB of his current 2TB drive so a bigger SSD wouldn’t be worth the price.

strangederby wrote:

On my android phone the volume keeps going down to zero when I plug headphones in.

Update. It only ever happens when I'm outside. Inside using headphones the volume stays normal.

strangederby wrote:
strangederby wrote:

On my android phone the volume keeps going down to zero when I plug headphones in.

Update. It only ever happens when I'm outside. Inside using headphones the volume stays normal.

i have no idea what being outside would do....

if it's in your pocket does this still happen?

in your car?

have you tried holding your phone upside down to see if the volume then goes up?

*Legion* wrote:

So now I think I'm gonna order Frontier fiber, then knock my Comcast service down to about $60 for my redundant connection (600 down / 15 up)

(...)

I just set up a pfSense router for my home network, so I shouldn't have any problem setting up multiple WAN devices. Should be able to toggle between them pretty easily and/or set up automatic failover.

Fast forward three weeks from this post...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/3deOOva.png)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/nRFizDB.png)

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/9ScPO7A.png)

It's beautiful.

Now I just need to sort out some cable runs, as I've got an Ethernet cable running the length of my living room at the moment. My weekend project...

If anyone's thinking about Frontier FIOS and wondering about using your own routing hardware, let me just throw this tip out there to the Internet. You may find that your FIOS connection won't assign an IP address to your hardware. The installer will think it should work, the tech people he calls and escalates to think it should work, but the only device that will actually successfully pull an IP is their Arris router. Fortunately, this router has a mode called Transparent Bridge mode. Log onto the Arris router's web panel, go to Advanced > Connection Settings > ISP Protocol drop-down > set to Transparent Bridge. Hit Apply. The router's web panel will cease to be accessible, but if you're running an Ethernet cable from the Arris router to your own router, your router should now successfully pull down an IP address from Frontier, and function as expected.

I suspected a bridge mode like this existed when we were troubleshooting, but it was this Reddit comment with a mere 2 points that had the exact details.

The installer will think it should work, the tech people he calls and escalates to think it should work, but the only device that will actually successfully pull an IP is their Arris router.

Frontier tech support is atrocious. My dad finally had his connection "fixed" after months of back and forth, tech visits and equipment swaps. So if you are less tech savvy than *Legion*, be warned.