Sarasota PC Monitor
Review Chairmans Industry Comments (11/06)
The Computer Buffet
by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor
E-mail comments, suggestions, etc. to Herb Goldstein at: revieweditor@spcug.org
WINDOWS VISTA PRICING. Would you pay $400 retail for a full version of Windows Vista Ultimate? It's a lot to pay for your operating system. Here's the pricing as announced:Vista Ultimate, Full-install price: $399; Upgrade price: $259 Vista Business, Full-install price: $299; Upgrade price: $199 Vista Home Premium, Full-install price: $239; Upgrade price: $159Vista Home Basic, Full-install price: $199; Upgrade price: $99
As with other versions of Windows, the expectation is that you will be able to do a clean install with an upgrade DVD as long as you have the retail media for the previous version available at the time of Vista installation. The only previous versions of Windows that are upgradable are Windows XP and Windows 2000. For more information about upgrade scenarios and limitations, see this Microsoft document. www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/upgradeinfo.mspx
TEST YOUR TELEPHONE. In the past couple of years, Internet telephone services have become quite popular. They are properly known as VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. With VoIP, one of your biggest concerns might be call quality. What good is it if your calls are garbled? Well, if you're having problems with your Internet phone, find out where the problem lies. At TestYourVoIP, you can run a test on your service. It will provide a detailed analysis of a call placed from your service. Then, if you need to, you can forward the results to your service provider. It can help you get everything cleared up! www.testyourvoip.com
THE QUICKY PASSWORD GENERATOR is fast, efficient, small and it is free!. It generates up to 100,000 passwords at a time of 4 to 20 characters. The passwords are displayed and can be copied to your clipboard easily. There are options for alphanumeric, uppercase only, variable length, and special characters. This program takes less than 700K total space. Shareware version available with additional features. www.quickysoftware.com/passwordgenerator.html
GLOBALFIND can search through files for specific data and display the results in a list. A few notable features:
Performs fast query searching within files. Reliably replaces text directly in the files. Allows usage of "extended" characters by using a special setting. Search options include "case sensitive" and "whole word only". Optional "search within results" for text searches. Log file tracking and command line "silent" mode. Configurable file viewer to view changes. Configurable thread priority for searches. All settings are auto-saved for you on exit for next time.
GOOGLE READER. Web applications don't come much easier to use than Google Reader, a good and free news-feed reader that's still growing in that incubator of neat new stuff, Google Labs. Those who love all things Google will latch right on to this one. It's certainly superior to its (also free but very rudimentary) counterpart in Internet Explorer 7. And compared with the venerable My Yahoo! feed pages, it looks sleeker, makes navigation easier, and simplifies compartmentalizing of news feeds-although it probably won't pull away users of that service.
WHEN BAD DISCS GO GOOD. Have you ever lost an important file on a DVD or CD? InDisc Recovery 3 from OctaneSoft makes it easy for you to recover all or parts of files stored on damaged or corrupted DVDs or CDs that Windows is unable to access. The program can read files on media created with Nero Burning ROM, Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator, and other ISO-9660 CD or DVD writing software. InDisc Recovery 3 is free to try, and $25 to buy.
NEED A FONT? Go to dafont.com for a huge collection of fonts, most of which are free. There are some that are very unusual that will spice up any kind of document.
LINGUASAVER. This screen saver displays phrases in any two languages from a set of five (Spanish, French, German, Italian, or English), with a slight pause between the first and the second languages so that you can offer your own translations. To install, just click the executable file and LinguaSaver becomes your default screen saver. The settings are accessible via the Display Properties dialog box. You can choose the languages you wish to display, add your own phrases, and set the speed at which the phrases appear. This free version of the program does not expire and includes about 100 basic words and phrases with past, present, and future tenses. For $20 you can upgrade to the full version of LinguaSaver, which contains about 9000 phrases, plus more-advanced vocabulary and grammar lessons. www.linguasaver.com
EXCEL FORMULAS. Excel users will love this handy chart of commonly used formulas in Microsoft Excel. For this handy listing, go to http://office.microsoft.com/enus/assistance/HP052001271033.aspx
AVS DISC CREATOR enables you to write data CD, DVD and Blu-ray Discs as well as ISO images, using an easy-to-use Explorer-style interface. It offers support for multi-session recording and all popular media types including CD-R/RW, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, DVD-RAM, Double/Dual Layer DVD and Blu-Ray. AVS Disc Creator is designed for data burning, it does not support encoding of Audio CDs (but you can burn MP3 CDs). www.avsmedia.com/
COMODO VERIFICATION ENGINE is an anti-phishing add-on that works with all popular browsers and automatically verifies the identity of many commercial websites. To make sure that the site you are doing business with is what it claims to be, you can simply hover your mouse over the company logo and a green border will appear around your browser window (and optional audio alert), indicating that the site has been verified. Verification Engine can detect advanced phishing scams by verifying the IP address of the actual site, as well as form submissions via login box. The program can only verify sites that are registered with the service, however this covers most large online merchants and financial institutions. Works with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Netscape. www.vengine.com
MOTHERBOARD MONITOR (MBM) is a very detailed and powerful system monitoring utility that should enlighten the heart of any computer geek. It can monitor fan speeds, temperatures, voltages and more. In addition, it provides detailed system information about you chip and memory. It also includes an alarm feature that can send e-mail alerts, initiate an FTP transfer or even send a pager message if conditions exceed the user defined condition. "Beep Beep, oops, gotta go, my motherboard is overheating." http://mbm.livewiredev.com/
COMODO FIREWALL is a free personal firewall that filters ingoing and outgoing traffic on your computer. It alerts you of any applications that attempts to connect to the Internet and allows you to permanently or temporarily allow or block the connection. Advanced users can customize the application and TCP/IP rules based on IP address, protocol and destination port, however this is not required unless you have a reason to customize the rules. In addition to application behavior and network connections,
Comodo Firewall also monitors components (dll files etc.) that initiate network connections, as well as parent processes and modifications to executables (checksum verification). Other features include attack prevention (port scanning, flooding), adjustable security levels, trusted networks, activity log and more. Comodo Firewall is easy to use for novice users, but includes enough flexibility via custom rule settings that allow advanced users to tweak it for their needs. The program requires a free registration after 30 days. www.comodogroup.com
FOLDERMARKER. How many folders do you have on your computer? Scores of them? Hundreds? Thousands? Are all of them are alike: yellow folder, yellow folder, yellow folder, yellow folder... It's so easy to be confused with such a routine! Folder Marker is your free small assistant, an ardent fighter for your convenience and comfort in any kind of computer work. Use Folder Marker to mark your folders. One mouse-click and it becomes clear at once, which documents have a high priority, and which of them have normal or low priority. Which operations are finished completely, which are half-done and which haven't started yet.
Do you fear that someone might unintentionally delete information necessary to you? Mark a folder, and other users will notice at once that that folder contains important information for you.
Changing folder icons, Folder Marker will help you to cope with the standard yellowness. Folder Marker adds an item "Mark Folder" in the folder popup menu. Changing a folder icon is now a piece of cake.
Folder Marker is for anyone who wants to make his work with a computer more convenient. Folder Marker is for you. www.foldermarker.com
CASE CHANGING IN MS WORD. Did you know about the SHIFT-F3 key combination that lets you toggle between the "Sentence case", "lowercase" and "UPPERCASE" settings for a currently selected piece of text? Some people feel they have to SHOUT when communicating ideas through email or Instant Messaging programs, while others prefer to ignore the rule of placing a capital letter at the beginning of each sentence. Should you need to include text from people like these in a document of your own (either as a quote or paraphrase) the SHIFT-F3 key combination becomes a quick way to turn their text into a more legible and acceptable format.
VISTA WILL COST THE SAME AS WINDOWS XP. Microsoft says Vista will cost the same as Windows XP. There are several versions of the operating system. But Vista Home basic will run $200 for the full version. An upgrade will cost $100. Microsoft plans to release Vista to home buyers in January.
VISTA RC1 GETS POSITIVE REVIEWS. Early feedback on Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 bodes well for Microsoft. Testers say the operating system is more stable than expected. This means Microsoft may meet its deadline for releasing Vista. It plans to ship Vista to businesses in November. Home versions won't be available until January.
SMARTSTARTMENU. Program launchers are nothing new to anybody who has been using Windows for more than five minutes. These days, programs like that are a dime a dozen. There's one freeware solution though that you will enjoy. The SmartStartMenu makes launching programs less of a pain. The programmer behind SmartStartMenu writes: "SmartStartMenu for Windows essentially turns the process of running almost any program into a three or four key-stroke effort. SmartStartMenu does this for you by automatically generating "on-the-fly" alphabetized lists of items from your start menu (or SmartStartMenu's internal history) based on what you type! "If you ever use the "Start" menu to run programs you will find this tool is a much better way to find the menu item you are looking for.
Since SmartStartMenu is based on your "Start" menu there is no "alias" database to maintain, there is no "alias configuration" interface to learn. You can change the keystrokes you use to access menu items through SmartStartMenu by changing your "Start" menu directly. "With a little tweaking of your "Start" menu you can configure any program that you want to be run by any three or four letter keystroke that you want. As you type into SmartStartMenu a type-ahead style list is generated on the fly from your "Start" menu or SmartStartMenu history.
Select the item you want (or just press the "Enter" key if the item is already selected) and the program is started just as if you had selected it from the "Start" menu directly." As you can see, this is one helpful little tool to have.
All in all, this is a freeware application that everybody must at least try out once. The shortening of launch time for our applications is something we could all use. http://www.planetharrington.com/products/smartstartmenu/
COMODO I-VAULT] Comodo i-Vault is a secure password manager that enables you to store sensitive account information, online passwords, serial numbers, and other important information. It uses the 256-bit AES encryption standard for secure storage of your data and offers additional protection to prevent keyloggers from capturing your password. The program includes a variety of input templates designed for credit cards, bank accounts, Web site logins, and other common types, and also integrates with Internet Explorer to allow fully automatic login to Web sites (optional). Comodo i-Vault also comes with a handy Quick Password feature that allows you to quickly enter frequently used passwords from a popup menu that can be called via keyboard shortcut.
Other features include a built-in password generator, secure clipboard transfer, integrated backup, export or printing of passwords and more. A well thought out password manager with some unique security features and flexible IE integration. Requires free registration after 30 days. http://www.snapfilespro.com/gnomeapp.php?id=110283 YouRipper v1.01 [853k] [Win98/ME/2k/XP] [FREE]
PANORADO FLYER v3.3 [72K] [Win 98/ME/NT/2k/XP] [FREE] For travelers, remembering where you took that photo of grandma and your aunt when all you have to go by is a mountain behind them is a little difficult. Thankfully though, there are freeware solutions to come jump to the rescue. Panorado Flyer is a freeware application that will help you match up your photos with the locations where they were taken. Still don't get it? Here is what the folks behind Panorado Flyer have to say about this freeware download. "Panorado Flyer is a small, yet very useful tool for linking JPEG image files to the location where the picture was taken, using geographical coordinates. JPEG image files can contain supplementary information (so-called Metadata). "Technical metadata as described by the EXIF standard can contain fields for GPS data, like geographical latitude/longitude, altitude, and track. The Panorado Flyer tool enables you to get the coordinates of the place where the picture was shot and insert them into these fields. "You can do it manually, using a dialog window. Or, if you have installed the Google Earth client (can be downloaded for free), you can search for the location there, drag it to the center of the map window, then change to Panorado flyer, grab the coordinates and insert them into the image selected, without typing any numbers." Personally, I never gave much thought to matching photos up with the areas where they were taken. For folks who travel a lot though, this could become a very neat way of keeping track of things. If you like this freeware download, be sure to check out this program's big brother as well. Panorado 3.3 offers some more GPS related functions, like the Image Finder: Find - within a specified folder (including subfolders) - all photos which have been taken in a distance of less than 5 km from the current Google Earth position. www.panorado.com/en/index.htm?Panorado.htm
SOFTPERFECT FILE RECOVERY. SoftPerfect File Recovery is a tool to recover accidentally deleted files from hard disks, USB flash drives, CF and SD cards, and other storage media. SnapFiles tested the program with images deleted from a USB stick and they were recovered without problems - however, the program will not be able to recover any files if the media has been formatted (or files have been overwritten). SoftPerfect File Recovery supports popular file systems such as FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, and NTFS5 with compression and encryption. www.snapfilespro.com/gnomeapp.phpid=110267
NVTWEAK. For optimizing Nvidia cards, this program was formerly known as Coolbits and drills into your Forceware driver to open up hidden settings. It reveals overclocking, AGP settings, fan control, temperature settings, etc. H4ck 3D at www.laptopvideo2go.com/nvtweak, Free
PROCESS EXPLORER. Tweakers looking to squeeze every last cycle from their PCs usually tinker with the many ephemeral processes Windows is always running in the background. This great freebie gives you all the details you need about every running process: its source, its importance to your system, etc. It even graphs any CPU usage each process requires. For ultimate tweakers, this is the boss. Sysinternals at www.sysinternals.com
PURETEXT. Sometimes the best performance boost comes from tools that make the little things faster . . . like pasting text from a Web site to a document without transferring the fonts and styles of the original. PureText strips formatting and font codes from items in the clipboard. A configurable hotkey combo pastes the pure text into the current window. Now why can't Windows do that by itself? www.stevemiller.net/puretext
RVM INTEGRATOR. If you reinstall WinXP more than a couple of times a year, then you need this homegrown tool. It helps you make a WinXP installation disk that includes not only the SP2 update but also the subsequent hotfixes since SP2's release. This advanced version of slipstreaming reinstalls WinXP in its fully up-to-date version with no further need for tedious downloads from Microsoft. RyanVM at www.ryanvm.net/msfn
LEAKTEST. They don't come more straightforward than GRC's LeakTest. The downloadable program deliberately makes a call out to the Internet to test your current firewall. If you get a warning from your security system and deny LeakTest a path to the Web, the program reports that you are protected. This is just a good, simple way to make sure the wall is up and running on any system. GRC also has a Web-based security tester. Gibson Research at www.grc.com
K-LITE CODEC PACK 2.75. Having trouble playing those downloaded video clips? Then you almost certainly must have this must-have collection of the latest video and audio codecs, which decode all of the obscure formats wandering the digital mediasphere. Every flavor of MPEG, DivX, Indeo, and all of the audio formats (AAC, FLAC, etc.) are covered. The polite installer lets you pick your codecs or install selections according to usage profiles. KL Software at www.codecguide.co
MEDIACODER. Even if you paid for this free open-source media conversion tool you would be impressed with its polish, versatility, and ease-of-use. Translate just about any imaginable audio and video file type into another with this little gem. From Ogg Vorbis to MP4 to mobile phone format, this thing just regurgitates everything, and it even has a built-in player that previews the final product. Nice view. Stanley Huang at mediacoder.sourceforge.net,
ZSOFT UNINSTALLER. For pesky programs that won't uninstall properly or leave too many traces of themselves scattered about your system, ZSoft Uninstaller is a great free tool for sniffing out the remnants. It can do a thorough uninstall of a program, including deletion of leftover files the program's own uninstaller ignores. ZSoft is great at finding temp files throughout your system and freeing drive space other cleanup programs overlook. ZSoft Software at www.zsoft.dk
STARTUPLIST. If you really want to know what programs are running on your system and identify their source files, then this is about the clearest and more comprehensive index we have seen. Using a tree directory, StartupList analyzes your system and tells you what drivers are loaded, which processes and services are running, where those DLLs and EXEs are located on your PC, and even which Registry key controls them. We have to admit, we've never seen anything quite like this gem. Merijn.org at www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/index.html
TEXTMAKER VIEWER. Similarly to the way Adobe Acrobat Reader works for PDFs, TextMaker Viewer lets you open, view, and print documents from Microsoft Word, Pocket Word, OpenOffice.org, OpenDocument, and TextMaker, even if you don't have those programs installed on your system. You can install the latest version onto a USB flash memory drive, too. This program is compatible with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, and Vista; it requires 13MB of hard disk space. www.softmaker.com/english
DRIVERMAX enables you to backup and reinstall all your Windows drivers. If you need to reinstall Windows, you can easily install all your drivers from the backup without having to insert or search for your original driver CDs.
You can choose to backup/install all your drivers or only selected drivers based on several filters or manual selection. DriverMax can export the drivers to a folder of your choice, and optionally compress them into a single zip file. Free registration required after 30 days. www.snapfiles.com/get/drivermax.html
BILLQ is a new web-based application that gives you an easy way to keep track of your bills. With billQ, you always know exactly what you have to pay, and when you have to pay it. It's Easy and free. If you are looking for a quick, easy way to manage your bills, look no further. /www.mybillq.com
OPEN INTERNET EXPLORER IN FULL SCREEN. IE often has a peculiar habit of starting in less than full screen. The annoyance is that you need to maximize it every time. Here's an easy way to solve the problem:
- Shut down all but one window of IE
- Right click on any link and choose Open in a New Window
- Now close the original window
- Maximize the new window the old fashioned way by dragging the lower right corner until it takes up the full screen. Do not use the maximize button.
- Hold down the Ctrl key and click the X (close) button in the upper right hand corner of the window. From now on all your IE windows should be full screen.
PHOTOBIE is a free multilayer photo editing application with support for Photoshop plugins. Browse images, batch process photos, resize, rotate, crop, color adjust, move and manipulate image sections and more. Filters and paint tools allow you to create and manipulate artistic and graphic design projects. Photobie includes screen capture, icon editing, gif animation, and photo framing for complete image management. http://photobie.com/
PSTART is a free system tray application launcher for starting user defined applications. Runs both from the local drive or portable USB keychain drives. Supports launching portable apps. Define custom folders and launch files, folders and applications. Keep portable notes. Quickly search for applications on all system disks connected to any PC for easy launching. Fully configurable interface supports a wide range of customizations and shortcuts. http://pegtop.de/start/
STEGANOS LOCKNOTE saves text files as secure encrypted data. Secure your text files with AES 256bit encryption. Either write new text files using LockNote or drag-and-drop existing files onto the application to save them as encrypted files. Keep passwords, sensitive data and anything you don't want to be in the clear on your system locked down with this encrypting text editor. It uses the CryptoPP program library for strong encryption. https://www.steganos.com/?content=locknote&language=en
MEDIATICKER is a whole new way to enjoy your digital photos throughout the day. Enjoy stock ticker style scrolling of photo thumbnails. Click any thumbnail for full size view. Docking sidebar mode keeps photos on your desktop without interfering with apps. Because MediaTicker is free, once in a while the ticker will display a message about new products from Roxio, or a trusted partners, or just something cool they thought you might want to see. www.roxio.com/enu/solutions/roxiolabs/products/photo/mediaticker.html
COBIAN BACKUP V8. No matter who you ask or where you turn, it seems like people are telling you to back up your computer more and more these days. Just a few years ago, backing things up was the cause of much pain and lost time. Now it can be done quickly with freeware solutions like Cobian Backup. So what is this freeware backup solution all about? The developers of the program say: "Cobian Backup is a multi-threaded program that can be used to schedule and back up your files and directories from their original location to other directories/drives in the same computer or other computer in your network. FTP backup is also supported in both directions (download and upload). Cobian Backup supports several methods of compression and strong encryption." Version eight of the program program now uses Unicode functions whenever it can. Using compression and FTP will use ANSI functions, of course, because of limitations in those formats or the FTP protocol. If you don't use compression or FTP, the program will always handle your file names as Unicode. The program now uses memory-mapped files for inter-process communication. All the TCP communication used in older versions has been eliminated. A new method of encryption has been added: RSA-Rijndael, which uses a 256-bit Rijndael encryption with a random key that is itself encrypted used a 1024-bit RSA asymmetric key. Sensitive settings as passwords are now stored in the .ini file using strong encryption. The result is obvious. If you do not already have a good backup plan in place, you should give Cobian Backup a shot. It is free. It is easy to use. It is one of the best freeware backup solutions out there today. What is there not to love?www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm DRIVERMAX V1.2. DriverMax enables you to back up and reinstall all your Windows drivers. If you need to reinstall Windows, you can easily install all your drivers from the backup without having to insert or search for your original driver CDs. You can choose to back up/install all your drivers or only selected drivers based on several filters or manual selection. DriverMax can export the drivers to a folder of your choice, and optionally compress them into a single ZIP file. Free registration required after 30 days. www.snapfilespro.com/gnomeapp.php?id=110304
VISUAL SUBST enables you to create virtual drives letters from any existing folder, allowing you to shorten the path to access the files by simply accessing the them via the newly created drive letter. For example, a long path like 'C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Photos\Family Album' could be easily accessed via the drive letter P:, acting as a shortcut to the actual folder. The virtual drive letters act just like any other drive letter and are accessible from all applications. Visual Subst is not only useful for convenient access, but can also become handy for developers who need to work with (script) files from another computer that use different drive letter paths in their configuration. http://www.snapfilespro.com/gnomeapp.php?id=110300 PSTART is a portable start menu that can be installed on a USB drive or your local PC and provides quick access to programs and documents. You can organize your applications into custom groups and launch them by clicking on the associated icons. The program supports advanced launch parameters, scheduled runs and custom icons, and also offers an option to generate an autorun.inf file for use with CDs. PStart also includes a small notes organizer, a search feature, and it displays information about the hard drive space on your drive. Other features include backup/restore, customizable interface, and an option to hide the launcher on the edge of your screen. www.snapfilespro.com/gnomeapp.php?id=110294
VISTA A SECURITY RISK? McAfee is warning people that Microsoft is taking security risks with Vista. Microsoft won't let security firms access the core of the operating system. It is denying others access to the kernel, supposedly to prevent attacks. Security companies view this as anti-competitive. Microsoft is competing with them with its own security programs.
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Copyright 2006. This article is from the November 2006 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/
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