Sarasota PC Monitor

Review Chairmans Industry Comments (12/05)

The Computer Buffet

by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor

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

Join The Buffet Party!

Perhaps you have a tender morsel that you have found interesting and would like to add to our buffet table and share with our members. Although most of what we offer is freeware, shareware or payware is OK too. It might include software, hardware, or perhaps a tip that might be useful to your fellow computer users. The major requirement is that it be interesting, brief and provide a reference as to where it can be obtained. Please send your favorites to Editor@spcug.org

HEAT IS THE ENEMY. Today's computers produce lots of heat. The faster the processor, the more heat. The more heat, the greater the chance of component failures. Well-built computers are generously supplied with good cooling fans and heat sinks to dissipate this electronic enemy. Unfortunately, heavy price competition among computer manufacturers has resulted in skimping on these essential elements adversely affecting the longevity of your computer's essential elements.

What can you do about this undesirable situation? Carefully buying or building your own computer would be a good start. After that, there is one readily applicable preventative you can easily employ. When you will not be using your computer for more than an hour or overnight, place it on hibernation to power it down! You will positively extend the life span of your machine and lower your FPL bill if you adhere to this simple procedure.

Hibernation places your computer in a power-down status that is close to complete shutdown but permitting a much faster restart when you are ready to resume your work. Placing your computer on hibernation is easy. Go to your control panel, select performance and maintenance> power options> hibernation. Simple step-by-step instructions will follow. Subsequently, it will take an eye-blink to either hibernate or re-awaken your computer. Nothing could be easier or more effective in preserving the life-span of your computer!

NEXT YEAR'S VISTA. Vista, Microsoft's successor to Windows XP, has been underway in preparation for some time now and is scheduled for introduction in late '06. There has been considerable speculation about what it will contain, but it's much too early to offer you anything really definitive. Be assured that we are watching the situation closely and will keep you advised. Certainly it will be the operating system that will be installed in new computers after its introduction. It's something to keep in mind if you are thinking about a new purchase. It is also certain that you will be able to upgrade Windows XP if Vista becomes appealing to you. We will keep you advised. Stay tuned!

URL DOESN'T WORK? Occasionally you may find that a URL that appears in the Computer Buffet does not work. Without offering any of the many reasons why this is possible, let me offer a universal solution. Go to Google and enter the name of the software, et voila!

QUICK AND EASY ACCESS TO EXPLORER. Use the Windows Key to quickly bring up an Explorer Window to access your files. Simply press Windows-E and Explorer should pop right up. The Windows key is on most modern keyboards next to the Ctrl key.

CLEARTWEAK 1.1. With this free utility, you can improve the quality of your LCD monitor's text display by adjusting your Windows XP ClearType settings. You can choose no font smoothing, standard font smoothing, or ClearType font smoothing. The program lets you enter sample text, so you can preview your changes before making them on your desktop. The program does not contain any spyware, adware, or any other type of embedded monitoring software.

YOUR BIRTHDAY STATS. Here's a neat tip from our secretary Janice Hinckly. Get a passel of interesting statistics about yourself by entering the day you were born. It does not ask your name,etc., only your date of birth so you retain your anonymity. Go to http://www.paulsadowski.com/birthday.asp

AVERY WIZARD AND AVERY PLUS WIZARD V2.0. Avery Wizard lets you print labels, dividers, name badges, and tags. It's an add-on to Microsoft Word, and it can merge Access, dBase, comma-delimited text, Paradox, Excel, and FoxPro. Options let you create a reusable list, use an existing list or database file, type many different entries on a sheet, or create a sheet of identical labels.

Once you have Avery Wizard, however, you still need to update it with Avery PLUS Wizard, in order to use all Avery products (the "PLUS" acronym refers to "Product List Update Software"). Click here to download the PLUS update of the program. The following link will take you to Avery's site, where you have to register before you can download the free software. http://www.avery.com/home.html

WHAT'S RUNNING V2.1.1 What's Running provides you free with detailed information for all system processes, services, programs, modules etc. that are currently running on your system. Furthermore, it includes information for currently active IP/Internet connections, as well as an interactive Startup Manager to to view, edit, and disable startup programs. The process viewer includes detailed specs for each process, including memory usage, GDI objects, modules, and more. Additional features include options to start/stop processes and services, online database for additional process information, and an option to take a snapshot of the current state. www.whatsrunning.net/whatsrunning/main.aspx

A REALLY SMALL APP v1.5. A Really Small App is a free small program that displays running tasks, number of current startups, IP address, uptime, as well as graphs for CPU and memory utilization. It can also tell you if network computers are connected to your PC. The program can run in the system tray and hovering the mouse over the tray icon provides you with a quick summary of the tracked information. www.areallysmallapp.com/

DAWN CONVERTS YOUR ADDRESS BOOK from one program's format to another. If you ever want to switch E-Mail programs or even simply use that WordPerfect address book in Outlook Express you have no doubt been put off by being forced to retype every single address by hand. Well, retype no more. A complete conversion is just a few clicks away. Power users will like the ability to edit and delete parts of the data before saving.www.joshie.com/projects/dawn/

WHOLOCKME. If you're having problems deleting a file, you might consider using WhoLockMe. The program has a handy Explorer extension, which shows which Windows process is locking the file. One click kills the process (a virus, Trojan, spyware, or in my case, a dialog box enhancer), after which you can delete the tenacious hanger-on. www.dr-hoiby.com/WhoLockMe/index.php

DICTSEARCH. Use this global dictionary to search in 275 dictionaries on the Internet. Translate from 69 source languages into 73 target languages - 400 language combinations. www.foreignword.com/Tools/dictsrch.htm

DISK INVESTIGATOR helps you to discover all that is hidden on your computer hard disk. It can also help you to recover lost data. Display the true drive contents by bypassing the operating system and directly reading the raw drive sectors. View and search raw directories, files, clusters, and system sectors. Verify the effectiveness of file and disk wiping programs. Undelete previously deleted files. www.theabsolute.net/sware/dskinv.html

SUBPAD is a lightweight notepad clone with all of the features of Windows notepad, but with more: It has faster find/replace features and a most recent documents. The author claims the find/replace routine to be perhaps the fastest out there. Other features include close on ESC, roll-up caption bar (as in Linux), toggle off/on URL highlighting, column selection mode and stay on top. It's a free download at www.xtort.net/xtort/subpad.php

iVOL is a free program you can use to adjust the sound volume of your computer in an extremely easy way. Just press your mouse wheel and scroll it up or down. You do not even have to move your hand! In addition, it also supports Shift+Wheel as an alternative. The program can display an on-screen volume level, and also allows you to switch between audio devices using Alt+Wheel. Double click mouse wheel to toggle "Mute" status. http://livecn.huasing.org/ivol/

PIXRESIZER, as the name implies, resizes your images to optimize them for Web and email use. It automatically recognizes image sizes to calculate the best fit, converts between image formats, rotates images, converts to grayscale, resizes multiple images in batch mode, and more. http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm

DEEPBURNER is an advanced and extremely powerful CD and DVD burning package that comes absolutely for free. It removes the hassle of making CDs, DVDs, and autoruns. It even makes it easy for you to create and print your own labels and booklets. DeepBurner supports a very wide range of internal and external (USB 2.0 and FireWire) CD and DVD writers. Burn any data, copy any disc, make backups, make ISO CDs with this very easy to handle software! www.deepburner.com/

EASYCLEANER searches Windows Registry for entries that are pointing nowhere. EasyCleaner also deletes unnecessary files like leftover temporary files, backup files, etc. EasyCleaner searches for duplicate files and displays information about disk space usage! Manage startup programs, invalid shortcuts and add/remove software list. http://personal.inet.fi/business/toniarts/ecleane.htm

AIMINGCLICK INSTANT SEARCH gives you a quick reference, translation, or explanation for any word or phrase selected in any Windows program. AimingClick is a reference book, dictionary, encyclopedia, Web search service, and many other information sources in one software tool. Besides, the information can be retrieved by a few mouse clicks or keystrokes. You do not even need to type a search query.

AimingClick captures words from Windows applications. Just select a word, hit a hot-key, and choose a Web site to search in the appeared box. Your Web browser will open a search result page of the chosen site for the selected word. Also, you can assign a Favorite site to search it directly hitting one hot-key.

AimingClick provides links to more than 100 most popular search engines and directories, online dictionaries, reference books and encyclopedias, news, and merchant sites, including: Google, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, MSN Encarta Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, BBC News, Amazon.com, and many others. And you can extend this list with sites you like. You can try it free and buy it for only $19.90. http://windows.fileoftheday.com/archives/internet_ aimingclick_instant_search.html

PHONE FREE WITH SKYPE. Getting in touch with friends and family is easy with this Internet telephone software, but the functionality is conditional. Skype offers a graphically pleasing interface that's much like a chat program. To make calls, you'll need to create a contact list of friends and family or use the phone-like interface to dial people directly. You also can access a pull-down menu for painless conference calls of up to four people. To make free calls, both parties will need to have the Skype software installed. To call regular phones, you'll need to sign up for a plan with SkypeOut, the developer's paid service that offers cheap by-the-minute calling. We like the intuitive chat-like interface of Skype and we were surprised at the excellent sound quality, even with regular desktop speakers. Similar to a chat client, you can set your availability status, but we also would like to see a missed call indicator or, better yet, some form of voice mail. Overall, we think Skype is a strong contender in the Internet Telephony category, and anyone who's interested in talking for free should give it a try. For international callers who have computers, this program is a no-brainer solution for long-distance bills. www.download.com/Skype/3003-2349_4-10225260.html?tag=nl.e415

CURSOR IN THE WAY? Have you ever been typing along, and suddenly you can't see what you are typing because the cursor is in the way? Then you have to grab the mouse and move the cursor out of the way of your text, and by that time you have lost your train of thought.

Easy fix to this problem: Go to the Control Panel (in Windows XP, Start - Control Panel. In other versions of Windows, Start - Settings - Control Panel). Double click the Mouse icon. Click on the tab titled "Pointer Options".

Near the bottom of that window, put a check in the box titled "Hide pointer while typing". Click OK, and then close the Control Panel. No more untimely interruptions from the cursor.

UNLOCKER overrides those annoying Error Deleting File or Folder messages. When you want to delete a file and Windows won't let you, use Unlocker to free the file from system processes holding it hostage. Unlocker will delete stubborn files, free files from a captive process or kill process that won't let go using normal means in the Windows Task Manager. http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

INFORAPID SEARCH & REPLACE is one of the most powerful search and replace utilities you can find. With it s built-in HTML filter, it s excellent for searching and previewing HTML documents (also in the cache of your internet browser)and supports many advanced search /replace techniques including regular expressions and phonetic searches. One of the nicest features is the fact that you can preview the search results with highlighted keywords as they were found, using a built-in mini browser. www.inforapid.de/html/english.htm

DRIVEIMAGE XML is an easy to use and reliable free program for imaging and backing up partitions and logical drives. The program allows you to:

Images are stored in XML files, allowing you to process them with 3rd party tools. Never again be stuck with a useless backup! Restore images to drives without having to reboot. DriveImage XML runs under Windows XP Home and XP Professional only. The program will backup, image and restore drives formatted with FAT 12, 16, 32 and NTFS. http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm

SCRATCH ALERT. Be aware that laptop and LCD screens are less scratch resistant than common CRT monitors. For cleaning, turn them off so that smudges appear more visibly. Moisten a paper towel with eyeglass cleaner or a solution that's half water and half isopropyl alcohol.

PC INSPECTOR FILE RECOVERY. Depending on how your files were lost, it may be hard to recover them. This free data recovery program recovers lost files and finds partitions automatically, even when the boot sector of your machine has become damaged or erased. Even when a file's header entry is no longer available, PC Inspector File Recovery can recover the file. The program lets you save recovered files on network drives. It recovers files with the original time and date stamp, so maybe it'll be like nothing ever happened. www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

WINZIP recently released a free beta (version 10.0) of its zipping program, which offers more powerful compression that creates smaller Zip files. It has an Explorer-style view and a "Job Wizard" that allows you to create and save repetitive zipping tasks. www.winzip.com

SMARTFTP allows you to transfer files free across the Internet. It features an Explorer-like, customizable interface and supports drag-and-drop functions. Multiple FTP connections can be opened at the same time, and you can copy files from one remote host to another (FXP). Remote-host directory information is cached for future viewing, and FTP URLs are supported. Other features include a Favorites list; the ability to resume broken downloads; a global history; background transfers; proxy support; a passive transfer mode; and the ability to perform recursive downloads, uploads, and deletes. www.smartftp.com

AVG ANTIVIRUS Free Edition is the well-known antivirus protection tool. AVG Free is available free of charge to home users for the life of the product. Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. AVG Free is easy to use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements). Highlights include automatic update functionality, the AVG Resident Shield, which provides real-time protection as files are opened and programs are run, free Virus Database Updates for the lifetime of the product, and AVG Virus Vault for safe handling of infected files. www.grisoft.com MORPHEUS 5.0 is the best and most powerful free file-sharing technology available today. The all-new Morpheus 5.0 has emerged from beta ready for prime time. See for yourself how the completely redesigned smart user interface makes it quick and easy to search, discover, download, and play all types of media files including MP3 audio, music, movies, videos, games, photos, and documents. Search multiple P2P networks including the new Neo Network, BitTorrent, and Gnutella to download more files including rare and unique content you can't get anywhere else. Morpheus protects your privacy with access to public-proxy networks; works with your antivirus software; returns fast, multisource downloads; provides Bitzi antispoofing lookups; and includes new community features and parental filters for safe downloads. Get Morpheus 5.0 and experience pure file-sharing with no third-party bundled software, the application guarantees no spyware and no pop-ups. www.streamcastnetworks.com

GOOGLE'S SCHOLAR SITE takes research to a new level. Just enter your search term to get a list of relevant articles. For each search result, you have a number of options. Find references to the article on the Web or in other academic texts. If the book or paper is in Google's system, you can read a portion of it. You may have to sign in, but it's free and easy to create an account. If you prefer, Google will help you locate the text at a library near you. http://scholar.google.com

CLONESPY. Do you ever find that you've opened the wrong version of a file, or that you have umpteen copies of the same download in different folders? Don't be duped by duplicates: Use CloneSpy to find identical files or filenames, no matter where they hide. CloneSpy finds files that have the same content, even if they have different names. It can also find files that have the same name, but different content. CloneSpy shows you the details of the files and their doppelgangers, letting you decide which one's for real. www.clonespy.com/

RESTORATION V2.5.14 There are lots of programs that permanently delete files and recover them, but doesn't just having one on your hard drive make you look like you have something to hide? Restoration can rescue your accidentally deleted files and permanently delete the files you want good-and-gone. It can live on a floppy, so it leaves no trace of its activities. www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html

HDD HEALTH V2.0 BUILD 151. Wondering how long your hard drive has to live? This utility will help you make the most of your time together, so you can prepare for life without it once it's gone. From its vantage point in your system tray, HDD Health uses Self Monitoring and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.), which is built into all new hard disks to assess your hard drive's condition and send you alerts when it's time to put your hard drive's affairs in order. Neither these alerts nor the records the program logs for you will tax your system resources. http://www.panterasoft.com/index.html?source= hddh_shortcut

Bulk Rename Utility v2.1.0.10 As the project you're working starts to balloon, it gets hard to remember which files pertain to what. You may want to rename some files to help you keep everything organized. With this utility, you can rename groups of files or folders in one fell swoop. You can perform string substitutions, add date-stamps, add or remove specified digits or characters, and make other useful changes. A preview shows you what the new names will be, so you can change your work before committing to renaming. www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

MERCURY AUDIO PLAYER V1.21 The Mercury Audio Player is definitely an audio player that is out of this world. The interface should be simple enough for you, because it looks like Winamp did before it added all the junk features. So how does the Mercury Audio Player stand up to the other big boys in the audio department? I would say it stands up just fine. Here is what the folks at the Mercury Audio Player Web site had to say about the player: "The idea for Mercury was born out of a love of music and a desire for simplicity.

When was the last time you read on a software company's website that a program was considered complete?

Can't remember? Neither can we. Instead, a trend has risen. A trend that prefers adding more and more to the current software compilation instead of deeming the project finished. A trend that would rather see countless features in a never-ending list instead of keeping things simple and to the point. A trend that insists they do too much. Some of the features of the Mercury Audio Player includes: fully Shoutcast compatible streaming audio, universal ID3v1 tag support, ID3v1 tag editor, video playback, CD audio support, fullscreen video mode, freeform skin support, no skin mode, auto media resume upon launch, auto playback (alarm clock mode), A-B looping, three-way repeat, integrated playlist editor, integrated search mode for playlist editor, and support for almost all major audio and video formats." When a program has features that I have no clue about, you know it must be good. So give the Mercury Audio Player a shot if you are looking for a different way of receiving your audio experiences. www.mercuryaudio.net/download.php

K-LITE CODEC PACK FULL VERSION contains almost all the codecs you need to watch almost any movie or hear almost any sound file. It also includes encoding support for some formats. The K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools. Codec is short for Compressor-Decompressor. Codecs are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular movie formats and even some rare formats.

The K-Lite Codec Pack has a couple of major advantages compared to other codec packs:

http://www.codecguide.com/about_kl.htm

DELETEONCLICK is a very simple to use free program that securely deletes (wipes) files so they cannot be undeleted or recovered. It's implemented as a Windows Explorer extension so you just need to right-click on the files then choose Securely Delete to wipe the files. When you delete a file or folder using Windows, it is usual for the file or folder to be moved to the Recycle Bin (Trash). When the Recycle Bin is emptied, the data you have deleted is not actually removed from your computer. Instead, Windows makes the space occupied by the file available for writing. In other words, every file you delete using Windows is potentially recoverable in the short term. If you create a new file after deleting using Windows, or save a changed file, it may write over the deleted file's space, thus destroying it permanently. Likewise, defragmenting will possibly overwrite the deleted files. DeleteOnClick completely deletes files in one click rather than sending the file to the recycle bin. www.2brightsparks.com

WEATHER WATCHER is your personal Windows desktop weather station. Automatically retrieve the current conditions, hourly forecast, daily forecast, detailed forecast, severe weather alerts, and weather maps for over 77,000 cities world-wide. The current conditions can be quickly viewed by holding your mouse pointer over the Weather Watcher system tray icon. Weather Watcher will allow you to automatically retrieve your weather data at a set interval, display the current temperature in a customized tray icon, display the current condition image in a tray icon, designate which weather information is displayed in the Weather Watcher system tray tooltip, convert the weather data using almost any conversion, display a weather map as your desktop wallpaper, log the weather data in any format, export the weather data in any format, customize the look of the Weather Watcher interface and icons via skins, and much more. www.singerscreations.com

BOOKMARKSYNC is a social bookmark community offering real-time automatic synchronization services that allow you to access your bookmarks and favorites from any computer or any browser, anywhere in the world. Real-time RSS feeds power your PC and mobile devices. http://www.sync2it.com/ Member Charles Cerrito highly recommends this freeware app.

ICON RESTORE. Icons don't stay put like they should. With Icon Restore, you can order them back to their places. After installing Icon Restore, you can save the icon layout. Then even if you change the screen resolution, you can call your icons back from their wanderings. http://users.rcn.com/taylotr/icon_restore.html

STARTUP CONTROL PANEL is a nifty control panel applet that allows you to easily configure which programs run when your computer starts. It's simple to use, is very small and won't burden your system. www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

PHONING AMAZON AND EBAY can be an impossible task and especially frustrating when you have a problem with them. Finding their phone number requires a CIA operative that even Dick Cheney is unaware of. So, for what it's worth, here they are. Please don't tell Scooter where you got them: Amazon: (800) 201-7575; EBay: (800) 322-9266.

USB BACKUP DRIVES. These drives tend to run very hot. To avoid premature failure, you would be wise to leave them disconnected when not in use. Maxtor makes it easy in their One Touch II drives that contain an off-on switch.

RECEIVING BLANK EMAIL MESSAGES? There are a number of different things that can cause this problem. For example, it can happen when you use Outlook Express as your email client and your Temp and/or Temporary Internet folders get too full. To fix the problem, do the following:

Open Internet Explorer. Click the Tools menu, then select Internet Options.

Click the General tab.

Click Delete Files. Click OK and then click OK again.

Open Windows Explorer. In the left pane, expand the partition on which Windows is installed.

Expand the Windows folder.

Expand the Temp folder.

In the right pane, select all files.

Click File | Delete, right click and select Delete, or press the Delete key.

Click Yes when asked if you want to delete the files.

CHECK YOUR COMPUTER'S CLOCK. Look in the lower right corner of your screen, and double click on the time that is being displayed. In the new window that comes up, click on the tab that says "Internet Time". Check the box that says "Automatically synchronize with an internet time server". You will see a list of servers there, but it doesn't really matter which one is chosen. Click Apply, and OK to close the window.

DOUBLEKILLER. If you have a partitioned hard drive, you may be wasting precious disk space harboring the same files in different areas. DoubleKiller hunts across single or multiple partitions and folders for identical files. It skips over files with important extensions like .dll, but it scans other files for duplicates. It checks the files' names, sizes, dates, and CRC32-checksums to see if any of them mirror one another. Once DoubleKiller locates the duplicates, it shows you a list of all of them so you can decide which ones to keep and which ones to delete or move. www.bigbangenterprises.de/en/doublekiller/ :

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Copyright 2005. This article is from the December 2005 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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