Sarasota PC Monitor

Review Chairmans Industry Comments (01/04)

The Computer Buffet

by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor

E-mail comments, suggestions, etc. to Herb Goldstein at: revieweditor@spcug.org

THE SOFTWARE ACADEMY AWARDS

Here's our annual rundown on the very best of the best software that belongs on most everybody's computer. This is the stuff that's to die for! If you don't already have these applications, set your goals on acquiring them. Some of them are either free or have free versions. Use Google to find their website:

  1. WINDOWS XP- The current undisputed king of operating systems. If you're still using Windows 98 or ME and wearing long johns and high-button shoes, get with XP and end your blue-screens, freeze-ups, resource problems and a multitude of other operating system headaches.
  2. MICROSOFT OFFICE- There was a time when Word-Perfect Office was champ, but Microsoft Office has gained a solid lead. What's more, it's the current world-wide standard that permits valid communicating with everyone everywhere.
  3. OPERA- The browser that makes you wonder why you ever used Internet Explorer or Netscape. Feature-rich and trouble-free!
  4. VCOM SYSTEM SUITE- A suite of 49 of the most useful utilities you ever laid eyes on that find, fix and prevent computer problems. It leaves the resource hog Norton Utilities in the dust!
  5. POWERQUEST DRIVE IMAGE- The quickest and easiest solution to making backups. It takes me 14 minutes to easily backup what used to take almost 3 hours.
  6. ZONE ALARM- The original and still the best of firewalls. If you go online without a firewall, you are just plain loco.
  7. SYGATE PERSONAL FIREWALL- A close runner-up to Zone Alarm.
  8. TREND MICRO PC-CILLIN- An antivirus program is only as good as its most recent updates. Nobody provides more frequent and automatic updating than PC-cillin.
  9. AD AWARE and SPYBOT SEARCH & DESTROY- Here are two free apps to prevent and kill spyware, trojans and other diseases common on the Net. You need them both. What one doesn't catch, the other will.
  10. WINDOW WASHER- Webroot's multi-faceted utility to erase your tracks and junk from your computer. Many utilities have bits and pieces of what's here, but this one has it all.
  11. POWERDESK UTILITIES- An absolute must-have file manager that permits you to perform dozens of the most useful and necessary tasks on your files and folders. It's Windows Explorer on steroids!
  12. MICROSOFT MONEY- Track your income, expenses, checkbook, budget, taxes and much more with this great personal finance manager. Quicken is OK, but this has the edge.
  13. TAXCUT- The best of the do-it-yourself income tax programs.
  14. GOOGLE- Find almost everything you want to know about almost anything with this king of search utilities.
  15. ROXIO CD/DVD CREATOR 6- The easiest to use, most accurate and trouble-free CD/DVD burner out there.
  16. ADOBE ACROBAT READER- The free version reads (not writes) PDF files which are daily becoming more popular.
  17. WINZIP- The worldwide standard for creating and reading Zip files.
  18. IRFANVIEW- Top-notch graphics file viewer.
  19. QUICKVIEW PLUS- Reads files from most popular programs as though you were in the program that created them.
  20. PICTURE-IT- Microsoft's photo editor. Very easy to use and very effective.

THE EMERGENCY E-MAIL NETWORK provides instant notification of local, regional, national and international emergencies. Register your e-mail address and the way you want to be notified - computer, PDA, cell phone, digital pager or fax. Then choose the categories you want to be notified about - severe weather information, utilities outages, Amber Alerts, etc. You can even turn off notifications during specific time periods. www.emergencyemail.org

CHOOSING THE RIGHT CELL PHONE CARRIER can be a daunting task. The famed rating organization, J.D. Power, will show you comparative ratings of those available in each state at jdpower.com/cc/telecom/jdpa_ratings/wireless/Find.jsp

PROTECT YOUR DATA DATA. Merely erasing what's on your hard drive is not sufficient. Erased files can be easily recovered unless they are overwritten several times. There are many utility programs that will do exactly that. PC Inspector e-maxx meets the strict standards of the U.S. military. It says no data can be recovered after it is used to wipe a disk. This program is free: www.pcinspector.de/emaxx/ uk/welcome. Another highly rated free utility that will do the job is at www.heidi.ie/eraser/

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES DRIVES. A question was recently posed as to whether an externally connected hard drive could be used to boot a computer in the event of failure of its internal drive. The answer is no. The drivers (USB or Firewire) that activate an external drive are not available until the computer boots via its internal drive. A backup to an external drive can be used only to restore files to a functional internal drive.

CLEAN UP YOUR HARD DRIVE DRIVE. i.Disk shows you your files in a tree-like structure, so you can quickly see what's taking up the most space. From there you can figure out which files you need and which ones you don't. To delete files, just trim that part of the tree. This utility lists all the subdirectories and their total sizes in a sorted order. This tree-based display provides useful information that allows you to reclaim disk space by finding where space is being used. You can delete files of a particular extension or delete certain segments of the directory tree. Get It free at meme.com

FLIGHTARRIVALS.COM is a very good site to keep in mind especially at this most frequent travel time of the year. It will give you instantaneous up-to-the-minute information on arrivals and departures for all scheduled airlines at any airport in the country.

PRICEGRABBER.COM is a great place to go comparison shopping for computer-related items. Specify the item and it will comparison shop, including taxes and shipping.

END OF POP-UPS? The Microsoft indicated that it will add pop-up blocking features to Internet Explorer (IE) this year, as part of an update for Windows XP. Others have offered similar tools before, but because IE so thoroughly dominates the browser market, ad executives and Internet watchers believe the changes could finally burst the bubble for pop-ups.

*EASY ENVELOPE ADDRESSING ADDRESSING. Kim Komando offers advice on a fast and easy manner of addressing enve;opes in Microsoft Word: You can easily do this by creating an address template in Word. Then you can save it to your desktop.

When you need to address an envelope, double-click the template.

Enter the address in the template and print it, just as you would any document.

To create the template, open Word. Then, click Tools>Letters and Mailings>Envelopes and Labels. Enter your return address. If this will be a general template, enter yourself as the addressee. That will show you where to put the real address when you use the template. If you have regular correspondents, you can make specific templates for them.

After the addresses are entered, click Add to Document.

That will create the template. Now, check to be sure it works on an envelope.

Put an envelope in the printer. On the template, click File>Print.

When you're satisfied, click File>Save As. Name it Address Template. In the Save In box at the top, click the down arrow. At the top of the list, find Desktop. Click that. Then click Save. The template will be on the desktop. To use it, double-click the icon.

If you prefer, there are a number of shareware programs that would open more quickly than Word. These programs are all shareware. Download them and try them out before you buy:

Star Envelope Printer Pro (http://www.starre.com/ envelope.html, $15),

Envelope Printer (http://www.sorcerersoftware.com/ envelope.htm, $15),

Easy Mail (http://www.homeplansoftware.com/, $34.95).

GET TAX FORMS HERE. If you live in the U.S. and are doing year-end tax planning, or just getting a jump on April 15th, you can get any IRS form free right off the IRS' Web site: www.irs.gov/formspubs/index.html If you have questions (and who doesn't when it comes to tax preparation and planning?) check out their FAQs: www.irs.gov/faqs/index.html

KEEPING YOUR COMPUTER'S CLOCK SET. How do you set the time in your house? I don't mean do you know how to set the clock on your VCR, but what TIME do you actually enter? Do you just use the normal 'best guess' approach that practically everyone else does?

If so, then get ready for the real deal - set your clock using THE timekeeping source, the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Get free Web site NIST maintains the primary frequency (time) standard for the United States, and operates a special server using the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to allow Internet users to get the time from them!

Once ATS is set up, you can have it periodically set your system clock; plus it even has a built-in NTP server so you can synchronize all of your other computers quickly and easily!

You can even specify a custom time offset to ensure that it sets your clock just the way you like it (maybe faster, so you're always a bit early). www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/ats.htm

POOPING POP-UPS UPS. According to C-Net news, Microsoft plans to add pop-up blocking features to Internet Explorer next year as part of its Service Pack 2 update for Windows XP, a move that would go far toward stamping out the Web advertisements. Darin Linnman, a Microsoft spokesman, said that the company plans to add the pop-up blocking feature to an updated version of Explorer with Service Pack 2 (SP2) when it's released in the first half of next year.

INTERNET PHONE CALLS CALLS. AT&T plans to let customers place telephone calls using Internet technology, an increasingly popular option for businesses and individuals that's cheaper than routing calls over the century-old telephone system.

OFFICE DOWNLOADS. If you use Microsoft Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and/or Word, you might like to check out the free downloads at http://www.theofficeexperts.com/ downloads.htm .

THE INTERNET FRAUD COMPLAINT CENTER (IFCC) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). IFCC's mission is to address fraud committed over the Internet. For victims of Internet fraud,

IFCC provides a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities of a suspected criminal or civil violation. For law enforcement and regulatory agencies at all levels, IFCC offers a central repository for complaints related to Internet fraud, works to quantify fraud patterns, and provides timely statistical data of current fraud trends. www.ifccfbi.gov/index.asp

NEW GOOGLE TOOLBAR. Take the power of Google with you anywhere on the web. New features in v2.0 includes a pop-up blocker, autofill, the ability to create a Web log post pointing to the page you are visiting, and restrict your search to pages in a specific country. The Google Toolbar increases your ability to find information from anywhere on the Web, and it takes only seconds to install. You can quickly and easily use Google to search from any Web site location, without returning to the Google home page to begin another search.

Google Toolbar features include the familiar Google Search, plus other features such as Search Site, which allows users to search only the pages of the site they're visiting; PageRank, which shows users Google's ranking of the current page; Page Info, which allows users to access more information about a page, including similar pages, pages that link back to that page, as well as a cached snapshot; and Highlight, which highlights your search terms as they appear on the page.

This release retains all the winning features of previous versions and offers new ones that make it a must-have accessory for Internet Explorer. In a nutshell, placing a Google search box directly into your browser makes it easier to find what you want because you can access Google features from any Web page. The toolbar offers a highly effective pop-up blocker, a nifty News button, a simple forms filler that automatically fills out Web forms with information stored locally, and more customization options Note that using advanced features such as PageRank automatically sends the URLs of the site you are viewing back to Google's servers. The PageRank feature is optional, and you can enable or disable it at any time through the toolbar's Options button. But if you are concerned about privacy, Google gives you the option of downloading a version that does not report back. http://download.com.com/3000-2379-10220032.html

WINDOW WASHER. Many people don't realize that everything you do on your PC can be traced: documents you've used, pictures you've viewed, Web sites you've visited. These online tracks put your privacy at risk and eat up valuable hard-drive space. You can take back your privacy and improve your system's performance by regularly cleaning your cache, cookies, history, recent documents list, and more with Window Washer. The original and most advanced system-cleaning tool available, new Window Washer 5.0 introduces innovative enhancements including oneclick file shredding; a customizable user interface; built-in safety features that prevent you from accidentally removing important files; Cookie Keeper, which easily maintains preferred Internet settings; and a free copy of My Personal Favorites, a tool for securing and organizing your favorite sites and your usernames and passwords.

Protect your privacy and boost PC performance with Webroot Window Washer Fast-operating and multifunctional, Webroot Window Washer cleans all the temporary information left on your PC after surfing the Internet. The fast installation leads to the opening of the main window and the brief online tutorial. You can skip the tutorial, since the program is self-explanatory. Just click the Wash Now button and the program literally leaves your browser's cache, cookies, history, and recent documents list as clear as if you had just installed Windows. Installation and customizing are equally fresh, with better autocomplete and stored-password controls than similar programs, as well as a bevy of plug-ins that eliminate excess file and data tracking on a wide range of programs. The program is awash with features such as autorun, autoupdating, and background cleaning. Anyone could benefit from trying Webroot Window Washer. webroot.com

DEFINING SUCCESS:

At age 4 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 16 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 20 success is . . . going all the way.
At age 35 success is . . . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 60 success is . . . going all the way.
At age 70 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.

Logitech Cordless Navigator Duo

The Cordless Navigator Duo represents the last in our series of pack ages from Logitech that combine a cordless mouse and keyboard. As in the previous combos it contains a cordless optical mouse and a cordless keyboard with offer controls for many common and extremely useful functions.

The importance of a smooth and easy working keyboard and mouse cannot be overemphasized. They are the two implements with which you are constantly interacting all the time you are using your computer. The devices that are originally supplied with your computer are usually corded and most often the least expensive and most inefficient where cost containment is the prime consideration. One of the best things you can do for pleasurable computing is to obtain the most worthy of these devices. The cordless factor means that you can position the keyboard anywhere, including on your lap, within a range that you can see your monitor. The same applies to your mouse that will work on almost any surface at a similar distance.

The supplied software permits very easy and simple setup and onetouch control over the functions of some of the keys on your keyboard and the buttons on your mouse. A small radio control receive-send unit attaches to your computer via USB or PS/2 and serves to communicate with both your mouse and keyboard within a 6 foot range. One of the many nice touches on this board is the additional labeling of the dual function keys to include the additional function.

As was the case in the previous duo's, the key are quiet with a feel and touch that is superb. The board lies at zero degree tilt giving extra wrist comfort and carpal tunnel protection. Legs are present for those who prefer a tilted board. It is a joy to access so many of your most common functions, including those that control Internet movement, multimedia, webcam, instant messenger and e-mail with just a single key press. The mouse contains Logitech's new optical engine which is twice as fast as and more accurate than most other manufacturers. It glides easily on different surfaces. Its batteries are also relatively long lasting, yielding an average usage of approximately 6 months. The mouse is extremely comfortable and can be used equally well for both right and left handers. As with other Logitech products, the Navigator Duo comes with an exemplary industry-unique 5 year warranty. It lists for $79, but you will find it commonly at a widely ranging street price between $40-70. ?

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Copyright 2004. This article is from the January 2004 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/

The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.

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