Could you get in touch and let me know about the quirks you want smoothed in the future versions?
Glad to, Graham, but all I could think of was two very minor quirks
(Had to resort to a separate post here, because my "MT NewReader" rebelled at your request for an email reply, and refused to let me send this post from the original thread)
Little background for Power Manager itself.
About "Power Manager"
(abbrev' "PM" for this post)
$28.95
30 day free trial period.
http://www.dssw.co.uk/powermanager/
The creator of PM requested that I send him email regarding any minor complaints about his software.
I do not desire to post my own email address here because of the nutcases in these Mac NGs, so I will respond in this NG.
PM is like the built-in Energy Saver in OS X, only with added features.
Like Energy Saver, it helps a Mac user save power, very desirable for many reasons, but that is not why I bought it.
Like Energy Saver, other features are offered also, such as scheduling power off/on and sleep off/on to occur automatically. (also log off/on)
PM is more flexible in this respect.
For example, with PM a user can create a schedule to turn off/on the main power to his home Mac every hour if he desires, or even every 2 minutes, or at specified times during any particular day or night of any particular year.
This can't be done with the OS X Energy Saver.
This one feature is VERY desirable for road warriors like myself, and others here, who desire to remotely operate their home Macs with a minimum of fuss.
Minor complaints, from me only, the following may not bother other Mac users at all.
The "Schedule Assistant" is too rigid, a user should be able to set their own custom schedule.
I eventually figured out how to set my own "custom" schedule, however it is not intuitive.
The Power Manager main window makes it appear that one of the buttons will open the main "Help" index. It does not:
"For help and a guide to using Power Manager, click the button below"
...brings up an abbreviated "Help", with the majority of Help topics completely missing.
To bring up the fully expanded Help menu, a user is forced to look around and try several approaches, before he succeeds in finding it.
In general, using the expanded Help menu, and
doing a lot of experimentation to overcome these
minor glitches, will allow a Mac user to tap all of
the benefits of creating his own custom schedules
to turn off/on main AC power, and turn off/on sleep.
These are "picky" complaints, I really like the utility very much.
When I am on the road, and the hotel staff tells me that my room will not be ready at 12 noon and that I will have to wait until 3 PM...
No problem, my power-on schedule took that situation into account. At 3:30 PM, my home Mac powers up, allowing me to grab control of it.
If the hotel catches on fire, or my ISP goes down, or my portable MacBook blows up, no problem.
My home Mac will gracefully log off and shut itself completely off, on a schedule.
...and that schedule can be easily modified remotely, if conditions of my trip require a different schedule.
Mark-
In article 100620080056494507%this.is@redacted.invalid, Mark Conrad this.is@redacted.invalid wrote:
Could you get in touch and let me know about the quirks you want smoothed in the future versions?
Glad to, Graham, but all I could think of was two very minor quirks
I'm pretty sure he meant for you to contact him via e-mail, Mark...
In article jollyroger-DECFCF.08465210062008@redacted.invalid, Jolly Roger jollyroger@redacted.invalid wrote:
I'm pretty sure he meant for you to contact him via e-mail, Mark...
Yeah, I know, but I prefer not to reply via email.
I am not the only one who wishes that others would not use that feature of a newsreader. Barry Margolin hates it when people use that feature of a newsreader.
Posters in previous older threads tried to discourage Graham from using that feature of his newsreader, but no luck.
Grahams request raised hell with my newsreader, I did not know how to adjust the newsreader preferences to gid rid of all the damn modal error messages.
Graham makes a very good and useful util' for lazy road warriors like me, who do not have the patience to dink around with Terminal in order to "make a better Energy Saver".
Only problem is that his GUI interface is a bit non-intuitive. (my opinion only)
An expert geek like you probable has some arcane Terminal way to accomplish the same handy scheduling of power off/on, sleep off/on, login off/on.
If not, you might want to take advantage of the free 30 day trial period of "Power Manager", to check it out.
http://www.dssw.co.uk/powermanager/
Mark-
Mark Conrad this.is@redacted.invalid wrote:
I'm pretty sure he meant for you to contact him via e-mail, Mark...
Yeah, I know, but I prefer not to reply via email.
If a software developer asked me to send him my personal input on his product via email, I would do just that, not post here and hope he happens to read it in a timely fashion if at all, but that's just me.
This is not like someone asking for help and requesting email responses, this is a developer telling you your input is important to him and specifically asking you for it.
Grahams request raised hell with my newsreader, I did not know how to adjust the newsreader preferences to gid rid of all the damn modal error messages.
Here's an interesting concept: Copy his email address from his post, and paste it into your preferred mail client.
Mark, thank you for your comments. They are helpful. I will see what we can do to improve the two specific points you raise.
I appreciate your mentioning DssW Power Manager in this news group,
comp.sys.mac.system, and sharing how you use our software.
If you ever have any suggestions or need help getting more out of Power Manager, please get in touch at support@redacted.invalid.
Kind regards,
Graham Miln
In article support-25C70A.08234711062008@redacted.invalid, Graham Miln support@redacted.invalid wrote:
Mark, thank you for your comments. They are helpful. I will see what we can do to improve the two specific points you raise.
No big deal, they are only minor points.
I appreciate your mentioning DssW Power Manager in this news group, comp.sys.mac.system, and sharing how you use our software.
I did so because a lot of Mac users own MacBooks and some of them use their MacBooks to access and/or control their house Macs from hotels, etc.
Your DssW Power Manager utility makes it a lot easier to accomplish that task.
Mac users can see how much easier, by taking advantage of the free trial period of 30 days, without risking any money at all.
In my case, I can even recover from hard freezes of my home Macs, with an additional hardware device called "PowerKey 650" from Sophisticated Circuits.
Heck, I can even press and hold down the "power" button of my Mac Mini for 4 seconds, from a thousand miles away!
That is a pretty long finger.
Most Mac users would likely not be interested is such extreme measures, however. For one thing, the way I do it is to make a small modification of the Mac itself, not at all advisable if your Mac is still under warranty.
Mark-