OT- Software help....

David_LLAMA4x4 composed the following ...

Small download, acts like a printer after installation. Make your document in any program, 'print' it to a pdf file with PDF995. Works brilliantly, I use it regularly.

Also get PDFEdit so you can configure it easily.

It's a freeware with sponsors pages, and costs a small amount to register. IMHO, if you makePDF's regularly, it's well worth it.

Try also

they have a program called PDF factory which is very good. US$50. I have used the fineprint program from the same people for several years and its great.

Cheers,

Neil.

I use Jaws PDF, it usually costs a few ££ but I got a free version with a magazine. I can probably dig it out and stick it on a cd for you if you like. It works like a printer, you send the document to print and select jaws from the available printers and it drops a pdf on your desktop, jolly neat.

Regards. Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)

But surely you are not paying for the time your are online are you? Plenty of offerings of 24/7 unlimited dialup access for a fixed fee per month, around the =A312 to =A318 mark. It doesn't take long at 1p/mi= n to spend that sort of money in a month, just one or two hours/day online.

Once time based online costs are eliminated just start the download going as you go to bed and it'll be done in the morning...

As for a .pdf generator several have been mentioned but do they just create a large (read huge) .pdf graphic of the entire output or do they generate a "real" .pdf with graphics as graphics and text as text, thus searchable?

Dave Liquorice composed the following ...

PDF995 does produce a fully searchable (I used Adobe Reader 6.0) text and graphics separated output. I just tried it with a standard template from Publisher ... ;)

Many thanks for all the info - I now have the ability to create PDF's !!!

I don't pay for the calls on dial up, just the monthly fee but I don't know if ot os a Freeserve or BT thing but I get cut off every 2 hours!

Many thanks everyone

David LLAMA 4x4

So David_LLAMA4x4 was, like

BT cut you off every two hours (or so they say - I've often been on much longer without a problem) as a way of reducing wasted bandwidth. (They make this quite clear in their T&C). Freeserve may well do the same. It's annoying, but not catastrophic.

I've downloaded paid-for software which needed much longer than two hours, and the sites didn't support download managers such as GetRight. If it's triggered by no-traffic a two-hour cut-off would be OK. Otherwise...

So "David G. Bell" was, like

I don't tend to do this, so it doesn't affect me. I reckon a lot of BT customers are relatively unaware of the niceties of netiquette, and if they are given 24/7 access for a fixed fee may well leave the connection on while they go and walk the dog, thereby wasting a lot of bandwidth. As I said, it's all in the T&C, and anyone for whom this is a problem is free to go elsewhere. I was just pointing out to David that it *is* a BT thing. You're right, though - cutting off after two hours of no activity would be better.

My old freeserve connection did the same, cut you off right in the middle of something just because 120 minutes were up. Having said that, it would cut me off at anything between 15 min and 120 min depending on how busy the servers were!!! One of the many reasons I left freeserve (wanadoo) and went bt broadband, which is brill. No spam, no connection issues, and fast downloading. Badger.

So Badger was, like

Lucky person. We are scheduled to get broadband to our exchange in April

2005 - but we have now learned that we may be too many km from the exchange and might not get it at all.

Having broadband at work makes your home 56k connection seem worse than it really is.

Bah humbug.

Same problem with distance from exchange but we haven't even had a proposed date for the village getting it yet without us out of the village and up in the hills folk even having a sniff of it! The local secondary school ( 6 miles from us ) regularly sends letters back with the kids asking us to badgfer BT so they can get it!

David LLAMA 4x4

Yep, waited 2 years for enough people on this exchange to signify an interest in broadband before they (BT) would upgrade the exchange to be broadband capable. We are 4 miles from the exchange and all works ok, but I don't know what sort of distance you would need to be within? Badger.

The previously existing distance limits of 6km as the cable goes where lifted a couple of months back. Over 6km BT insist on an engineer visit to change the NTE face plate so that the ADSL signal is split out as quickly as possible. Iffy extension wiring and dubious quality micro filters were found to be a major cause of problems.

So Dave Liquorice was, like

That's really good news, thanks.