Recently I downloaded Audacity to  start making a podcast.
As a student of the way of the dongle, I  thought this might be easy enough to grasp but it isn't,  and apart from a few pdf's there are no manuals according to Google.

1.It appears to impossible to switch it off sometimes, since when I start up the laptop 1 or 2 programmes are already running.

2. One of  the 'programs running' when 2 appears to be the Mac version which I downloaded accidentally. How do I get rid of it?

3. I recorded an interview which split itself into 12 second bits-bit of a long job for 25 minutes' worth and I can't grasp how to do it. I think I may need to find a short course somewhere, but any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks Guys.

Hi Ron

OS is  Windows XP. Dell Latitude about 5 years old.

Programmes-not much really:

Rendera graphics editor
PageBreeze HTML editor   
Lame mp3 encoder
Usual Windows stuff but not Office.
drivers for '3' dongle (only known to conflict with a/v cloning  programes)
Flash 9

Yet constant messages of 'fatal error-disk is full' (I assume hard disk) and invitations to delete. The audacity files themselves, even the 12 second splits, seem to be taking up unreasonable amounts of  space uncompressed.

Thanks

Audacity files are gigantic - if you're going to use it regularly, it's worth leaving a couple of GB free for that purpose. The nice thing is that once you've converted your recording into MP3 or whatever other format, you can delete the Audacity date folder and get all that disc space back.* (Worth noting too that Audacity data accumulates throughout the whole of an editing session - so if you add and delete a lot of stuff within one Audacity session, it all temporarily takes up disc space - once you restart your editing session though, a lot of the space gets freed up again.)

* A less nice thing is that that Audacity folder can't be moved elsewhere (to a backup harddrive, say) and still work - everything needs to be in the location in which it was first saved. At least that's my experience - others might know a workaround for this.

Audacity in my experience is very unreliable indeed. I'm a couple of versions behind the current one though.

thancs guys (elyzabrthan mode agayn)-pleased to have opened a wyder dyscussyon. y am wonderyng yf total recorder would be a better optyon-or what servycasble alteratyves are there? fryend of myne has pro tools whych loocs very expensyve.  ys there a low-myd range logyc-type system?

Again, I've not much experience of Total Recorder, marbs, but I do know people who are very happy with it, and the whole set up is more flexible than Audacity, with upgrades for more functions if you need them, which take it closer into the semi-professional league. Were you a Mac user, I'd be pointing yet again to Audio Hijack Pro and its editing sibling Fission. which is just the most analogue-like of editing programmes I've ever used, and a total joy. I also use DSP-Quattro (Mac only)and Pro Tools (cross-platform): in Windows mode I also use Wavelab Essential - there's a new version recently released, Wavelab 6 Essential, which might be well worth checking out: not too expensive, and if it's like its predecessors, easy to learn.

Thanks again all for your experiences and advice (from the office). Ron, those look well worth checking out. I've worked with a colleague who uses pro tools and it struck me as user-friendly but probably avast file - I was hoping to put or even sync notation software on the same machine. I tend to take a while to master new kit when sometimes I need to a straightforward task imminently. But this is worth an overall  rethink, and your advice in invaluable.