Sarasota PC Monitor

Review Chairman's Industry Comments (08/07)

The Computer Buffet

by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor

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

BAD HYPERLINK?? Occasionally for reasons beyond our control, a hyperlink provided here will not work. After carefully checking your typing (needs to be 100% accurate), the only suggestion we can offer is that you go to Google and enter the name of the software. If a more current hyperlink is available, this is the best place to look for it.

Please also note: Most of the software mentioned below is freeware. It is gathered through researching usually reliable sources. I do not personally try most references, time being the obvious factor.

MEDIAMONKEY. Not happy with Windows Media Player or your current media player, or are you just looking for an alternative? Then give the free MediaMonkey a try. It's an excellent tool for playing media, organizing your media library, and ripping and burning music. It'll play pretty much every music file that's out there, will synchronize with your iPod and MP3 player, and includes a tag editor. It will also automatically find album art for the file you're currently playing as well. MediaMonkey organizes your music in multiple ways, including by artist, title, album, genre, year, rating and so on. Unlike Windows Media Player, it loads fast.

Fans of Internet radio will like this program as well; it automatically connects you to the Shoutcast and Icecast online radio directories, and plays any stations you want. www.mediamonkey.com/

RSS BANDIT. Browsing the Web is so last century; these days, the Web should come to you. That's what RSS feeds can do for you. They're a way for you to keep up with your favorite blogs, news sites, political news, and much more. RSS Bandit makes it exceedingly easy to subscribe to and read RSS feeds, and organize them as well. Subscribe to any RSS feed and add it to a folder, and the program will automatically update the feed for you. Feeds you haven't read yet show up in bold, so you can see what's new. It displays full graphics, and even lets you play videos directly inside the program. www.rssbandit.org/

WISE REGISTRY CLEANER. Wise Registry Cleaner is one of the safest registry cleaning tools available in the market today. Its scanning engine is thorough, safe, and fast.

It is so easy to use that even the least experienced user can easily repair the registry with this tool. It scans the Windows registry and finds incorrect or obsolete information. By eliminating obsolete information in Windows registry, your system will work better and more quickly. Version 2.1 build 57 adds Windows Vista support, "Files And Paths" type, and automatic update check feature. www.wisecleaner.com

MICROSOFT FIDDLER. Microsoft Fiddler is an HTTP Debugging Proxy that logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP traffic, set breakpoints, and fiddle with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler is designed to be much simpler than using NetMon or Achilles, and includes a simple but powerful JScript.NET event-based scripting subsystem. Version 1.2 adds an auto responder tab. www.bayden.com

ABSOLUTESHIELD. AbsoluteShield Internet Eraser Lite contains a pop-up blocker and a privacy protector. It protects your privacy by cleaning all the tracks of your Internet and computer activities. The tool is integrated with Internet Explorer and can erase the browser history, cookies, typed URLs, recent documents, Recycle Bin, and temporary folders in one click, completely removing these files from your hard disk without the possibility of any practical software or hardware recovering them. www.internet-track-eraser.com

FREERAM XP PRO. Your PC's memory is a little bit like a plate of cookies at a party: You turn your back and it's all been nibbled away. FreeRAM XP Pro is a free utility that tries to keep your memory from being consumed by a system full of hungry programs. www.yourwaresolutions.com/

UNDELETE PLUS. The free Undelete PLUS can come to your rescue. Run it, and it scans your system for files that have been deleted, even those removed from the Recycle Bin, or deleted on a network drive or via a DOS window. It lists all the files, and tells you whether it can likely be restored. (In some instances, the delete file has already been overwritten; in that case, you can kiss it sayonara.) Then tell the program to restore your files, and they come back from the dead. www.undelete-plus.com/

SHELLEXVIEW. This tool lets you remove pesky programs and their remnants (including menu items) from your system. ShellExView, a freebie, lists almost all menu items (my PC had 300) and disables them so they won't appear when you right click on a file. www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

BAZOOKA ADWARE AND SPYWARE SCANNER detects a multitude of spyware, adware, Trojan horses, keyloggers, and trackware components, sources of irritation that many antivirus products do not deal with. The scanning process only takes a fraction of a second and tells you how to uninstall the invasive spyware or puts you in contact with the spyware developer for the most up-to-date and safe uninstall instructions. Spyware and adware often is bundled with software such as Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster, iMesh, Xolox, and Gnutella, and in many cases it's installed without your knowledge. Some send information about your surfing habits to ad companies, which target you with pop-up ads that fit your preferences. www.kephyr.com

KLIPFOLIO 4.01. Covet Windows Vista's new Sidebar feature, but still run Windows XP? KlipFolio provides the same functionality to your desktop via Klips, tiny dashboard apps that can handle RSS feeds, weather info, stock-price updates, Flickr photo searches, e-mail accounts, and more. Set up alerts for certain topics or keywords, and KlipFolio will inform when a relevant new article has been published. www.serence.com

ADVANCED DISK CLEANER 4.7. All kinds of junk files accumulate on your hard drive over the years, but who has time to go fishing around to find and delete them? Advanced Disk Cleaner makes such pruning easy. Click a search button, which produces a list of garbage files. You then click the Clean button to delete them. The program also has an editing utility to get rid of unnecessary apps lingering in your Windows Registry. www.innovative-sol.com

ICONOID. Iconoid gives you the tools to customize almost everything related to your desktop icons' appearance. Prefer to have your icons disappear from the main screen when you want? Iconoid can do that. Want to change the text-background color for your icons? Iconoid can do that, too. If you love to look at your wallpaper-and not your Microsoft Office icons-Iconoid provides the tweaking ability to make that happen, as well. www.sillysot.com

PARAGON ENCRYPTED DISK SE 3. If file security is critical to you, Paragon Encrypted Disk SE 3 can provide industrial-strength encryption at the low, low price of nothing. The utility offers three types of encryption algorithm-AES, Blowfish, and Triple DES-to choose among when creating a virtual disk image. You can write the encrypted image file to a CD, DVD, or flash drive, and store password information for encrypted disks on a flash drive or memory card. Protect private and sensitive data from potential unauthorized access. You can encrypt a virtual disk image with a modern and reliable encryption algorithm, including AES (a 256-bit key), Blowfish (a 448-bit key), and Triple DES (a 192-bit key). The encrypted disk can be mounted with any spare drive letter in the system; then every application and system process will have transparent access to the contents of the encrypted virtual disk. When you unmount the encrypted disk, access to its contents is no longer possible; it is a container file, or a so-called image file. You can write a container file to any compact media (CD/DVD, USB flash memory drive) and always carry the encrypted disk with you. You can use a password or have key files on a flash Memory Stick or card, disk, or other removable media to access encrypted disks. www.paragon-software.com

REGSCANNER. Mucking around in your PC's Registry is not for the faint of heart, but if you have the fortitude to handle the risks, RegScanner can serve as a valuable assistant. It lets you search for more values than RegEdit does, then lets you move to RegEdit for tweaking by just double-clicking on the values. The newest version allows you to perform scans on remote PCs. www.nirsoft.net/utils/regscanner.html

TRUECRYPT FOUNDATION. Protect your sensitive data with this free open-source disk encryption software. Create a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mount it as a real disk. Encrypt an entire hard disk partition or a device, such as USB flash drive. Automatically and transparently encrypt in real time. TrueCrypt provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password: a hidden volume (steganography- more information may be found here); no TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data). TrueCrypt uses encryption algorithms AES-256, Blowfish (448-bit key), CAST5, Serpent, Triple DES, and Twofish. It is based on Encryption for the Masses (E4M) 2.02a, conceived in 1997. www.truecrypt.org/

VUNET FIND 1. One of Microsoft's big selling points with Windows Vista is its improved desktop search function. Of course, that doesn't help you much if you're running XP or an earlier incarnation of Windows. Enter Vunet Find, which searches all of the files on your hard drive the first time it loads, then periodically updates its index instead of performing a full hard drive search each time, like Windows Explorer does. That means you won't be tapping your fingers while waiting for results. www.vunet.org/?id=19x6

AUTOHOTKEY is a script driven automation utility that enables you to automate almost any task on your PC by running applications or documents and/or sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. The program supports many advanced functionalities that allow you to create complex tasks with flow control, math commands, variables and expressions, file functions, message boxes and much more. www.autohotkey.com 

THE PC DECRAPIFIER attempts to remove all of the crap on your PC that you never asked for or wanted. To manually remove all of this stuff by hand can take at least an hour (depending on the severity of the infestation.) The PC Decrapifier will detect the 'crap' on your system, you choose what to uninstall, then sit back and let the PC Decrapifier work its magic. All of this stuff is placed on your new PC because the big companies like Dell, HP and others sell advertising space on your PC to put more money in their pockets at the expense of your time and frustration. The PC Decrapifier is a program free for personal use to help the average computer user combat this problem. http://pcdecrapifier.com

FASTSTONE CAPTURE. If you don't have Vista or don't like its Snipping Tool, you can always press to copy an image of your entire screen (or - for just the active window) to the Clipboard. But it almost always leaves out the pointer or cursor, and you still have to paste the image into and save it from Paint or some other image editor. For a fast, free, easy solution, try FastStone Capture. FastStone supports a variety of output formats, provides an editor for you to tweak your capture before saving, or lets you go directly to save (with auto file naming, if desired). www.faststone.org

CHANGING DEFAULT MARGINS IN WORD. Word allows you to alter the page margins. You can do by clicking Page Setup from the File menu. The Margin tab allows you to change the margins and configure a few additional options. You can use the up and down arrows under the Margins heading to change the margins in your document.

After you have configured the new margin settings, you can click the Default button at the bottom of the dialog box. This will update the margin settings in the template from which the document is based.

Alternatively, you have the option of only changing the margins for specific text within a document. Select the appropriate text and then open the Page Setup dialog box. After you have altered the margin settings, use the drop down arrow under Apply to and click Selected text.

IMGBURN. Looking to copy a homemade DVD? That's just one of the many tasks you can accomplish with ImgBurn. It's a combination disk-burner and disk-reader that's about as simple a program as you'll find, but will tackle pretty much whatever disk-burning task you throw at it. How's this for simple: Put a CD or DVD in your drive, and select Mode -> Read, and the program reads the disc. Then click the Read button, and it will create an .ISO image file on your PC, which is an image of the disc.

To burn that image to a CD or DVD, you only need to click a few buttons. www.imgburn.com

GODFATHER. When it comes to MP3 management, there are a lot of programs out there that will do a lot of things. It is often hard to find a good power tool that will let you organize and rename your files, and going through each one - one by one - is torture. If you find yourself in this boat, it is about time you paddled up and asked for your favor from the GodFather. GodFather is a freeware application that delivers when it comes to customizing your MP3 experience. It has more features than you can shake a stick at as well. Here is what the developer of the program has to say about it. "The GodFather is an intelligent MP3 renamer and organizer, that helps you get rid of all those strange MP3 file names and convert them into a consistent name scheme, based on the artist, song, album information etc. contained in the MP3 tag. The program will scan your MP3 folders and automatically suggest candidates for new names, showing you the old and suggested name in the result window." There is a good guide to help you reorganize your music using GodFather to help you get started.

Some people's music collections are the most important thing they own. They will trim it, they will keep it organized and they will not let anybody mess it up. To make sure your collection of tunes stays intact and easily manageable, I'd suggest you use GodFather for all of your audio management issues. http://users.forthnet.gr/the/jtclipper/

AUTOHOTKEY. When it comes to hotkeys, many of us know the Windows defaults. Don't you wish there was an easy way to extend on that idea though? What if you could develop your own set of hotkeys that would help you get your work done faster? AutoHotkey is the freeware download that you need to make this happen. The best thing about it is that it does not take a college degree to figure it out.

Here is what the developers of the program have to say about it: "AutoHotkey is a script driven automation utility that enables you to automate almost any task on your PC by running applications or documents and/or sending keystrokes and mouse clicks.

The program supports many advanced functionalities that allow you to create complex with flow control, math commands, variables and expressions, file functions, message boxes and much more." One part of the program that I really liked was the Script Recorder. It allows you to do a simple task automatically by recording your mouse and keyword activities.

There is a learning curve to this program, but once you get it down you won't know how you existed without it. If you need a hotkey application that is simple enough for novice users and powerful enough for advanced users, AutoHotkey is your choice. There is no better free solution on Windows when it comes to this type of work. www.autohotkey.com

CCLEANER. CCleaner is a system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It's fast (normally taking less that a second to run). It cleans: Internet Explorer (temporary files, URL history, cookies, autocomplete form history, index.dat); Firefox (temporary files, URL history, cookies, download history); Windows (Recycle Bin, recent documents, temporary files, and log files); Registry (advanced features to remove unused and old entries, including file extensions, ActiveX controls, classIDs, progIDs, uninstallers, shared DLLs, fonts, help files, application paths, icons, invalid shortcuts) third-party applications (removes temp files and recent file lists [MRUs] from many apps including Opera, Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, MS Office, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip).

Version 1.39.502 includes rewritten secure-deletion code, performance improvements, new AntiVir PE Classic cleaning, and other features and fixes. www.ccleaner.com

001 ACTION/RPG MAKER is a free fully-featured game creation engine where you can bring your RPG and action game ideas to life. With a new twist to point-and-click events, and a high level of customizability for characters, vehicles, items, and environment, it makes it a fun and rewarding platform on which to develop your next game. www.engine001.com

GETBYMAIL. With GetByMail, you can stay at home and have access to your office computer and vice versa simply through your e-mail accounts. You can get remote directory listings and tree view, download/upload files and directories, perform change dir, make dir, rename and delete operations, capture remote computer desktop screens, run remote applications, shut down, reboot, and log off the remote computer. During download/upload operations files and directories are automatically compressed and split into small pieces to assure reliable transmission.

GetByMail supports command line interpreter for some commands sent to remote PC from any e-mail client or Web mail application. It is an excellent solution if you want to share files with people who do not have access to FTP, P2P, or are behind firewalls. Web mail (POP3/IMAP/SMTP) and MS Exchange Server e-mail configurations are supported. GetByMail supports SSL connections over POP3/IMAP/SMTP protocols and is compatible with Gmail service.

PRIMO PDF. This free app lets you turn any printable document into a PDF without a hitch. Are you looking for a quick and easy way to make PDFs for screen viewing, printing, ebooks, and even prepress use? PrimoPDF will do it for you in a blink, for free, and with some nice extras such as security options.

PrimoPDF sits in your printer list, and when you "print" a document to it, the main PrimoPDF window comes up. The options are simply laid out:

You can create a PDF for screen viewing, print, ebook, or prepress (which embeds your fonts). You can include document properties like author name and keywords. You can encrypt your PDF using 40-bit and 128-bit encryption - useful if you are publishing an ebook you'd like to protect from free distribution or an internal document you only want certain people to see. Then select the destination for your new PDF and click OK. After PrimoPDF creates the PDF, the PDF opens in your default PDF viewer (we used Adobe Acrobat Reader 8) unless you set the options to do otherwise.

The security feature really is this program's best feature. You can choose whether users can print, copy text and graphics from the PDF, add comments, and make changes to the PDF. www.primopdf.com/

FARECAST. The next time you're on a plane, just try not to get frustrated by thinking about the fact that there are more than likely passengers sitting right around you that paid hundreds of dollars less than you did to get on the same exact flight. Regardless of what you may think about this airfare system, it is how it is, and informed passengers are the ones who are going to be able to scope out the best deals. If you need some help with figuring out when to buy your tickets (which we all do), then look into Farecast.

This service searches for airfares in the United States, and if you have some time in which to book your tickets, then you'll do really good here. To get started, just specify all of the details about a flight that you're interested in and see what Farecast has to say about it. They analyze all available data and proceed to tell you whether you should buy now or wait for prices to drop. Their interactive graphs are extremely beneficial in helping you to visualize airfares over a period of time or across the entire nation. For those of you with syndication fever, you can even track an airfare by setting up an RSS feed for it. www.farecast.com

PHOTOZIG ALBUMS EXPRESS. Create albums from your photo collection, edit photos, and share them with others, via the Web or CD. If you've got lots of photos, you'll appreciate this freebie, which organizes your pictures, along with short videos and songs, into albums. You'll be able to create multiple albums, organized in any way you want, easily search and browse for photos with tools such as keyword search and filters.

You'll also find photo editing tools built in, such as red-eye fix, resizing and cropping, changing the contrast and brightness, and so on. There's even a full set of tools for sharing photos, including burning them to CD, and sharing them on the Web, or easily sending them via email.

One of the program's nicer features is its customizable interface. Select either beginner, intermediate, or advanced, and the interface changes. At a beginner level, it's all graphically based; intermediate and advanced offer the ability to browse via a Windows Explorer-like interface, and to see hidden files and folders. www.photozig.com/

WORD HYPERLINK CHECKER. This add-on manages and checks hyperlinks in Word documents. Word Hyperlink Checker helps you detect suspicious and broken links in documents of any size. www.ablebits.com/

CONTROLLING WINWORD HYPERLINKS. Microsoft Word makes it very simple for us to create a Word document. It goes so far as to correct most of your spelling and grammar mistakes as you type. Using the AutoFormat and AutoCorrect options, Word takes care of almost everything, leaving you to focus on the content. One of the AutoFormat options apply to URLs. If you have ever typed in a URL or someone's email address, you have more than likely seen Word take over and turn it into a hot hyperlink. If you do not like this feature, you can easily turn it off using the steps listed below.

Alternatively, you can also disable an individual hyperlink by pressing the CTRL + Z keystrokes immediately after you type the address.

PHRASEEXPRESS is much more than just a clipboard utility. It allows you to manage your most frequently used text phrases right from the taskbar icon. You find yourself typing out certain phrases a lot. PhraseExpress cuts some of the work out of the equation and makes it simple enough to where it isn't more work to get the macro to work than it is to just type something out. Here is a little more about the program from the developer: The program is ideal for email reply templates, signatures, addresses, and other information that you are frequently typing. In addition, the program includes powerful macro functions to launch programs, files, or email messages, and to insert dynamic variables like incrementing values, dates, and more. There are many good reasons for people to use this program. www.phraseexpress.com

ORB provides the ability to MyCast. MyCasting gives the user instant access to photos, music, videos, live television, and other digital content on their home PC at any time and from any Internet-connected device, such as a mobile phone, PDA, or laptop.

Orb is first of its kind to allow consumers mobile access to all of their digital media. It is completely secure while having no restrictions in its use. Using any Web browser, Orb allows users to connect to their home computer and to stream digital content located on their PC. www.orb.com

FREE MOVIES, VIDEOS, and documentaries are available to you at www.jonhs.net/ You will find a better selection of all of these at this excellent site.

FREE DOWNLOADS FROM MICROSOFT are available in huge quantity and in many interesting categories at www.windowsmarketplace.com/ It's well worth the trip!

CRAWLER WEATHER provides current weather conditions for cities that you specify. Temperatures, severe weather, precipitation, aviation weather, and marine forecasts are available for the continental U.S. A Health & Outdoors feature gives you UV index data for the continental U.S., plus links to Web sites offering air quality, pollen, and snow information. Other features link to Web sites that provide travel booking and traffic information. Note, however, that most information provided is limited to the U.S. only. www.crawler.com/products/

PHOTO RESIZER PRO makes it easy to resize individual images or whole batches of photos for web display or e-mail sharing. You can resize the image in a new file format, such as PNG. Safeguards exist to ensure your bigger, high-res file isn't overwritten by the smaller file (unless you really want it to be). www.showyourphotos.com/photo_resizer_pro.html

MICROSOFT DROPS DIGITAL IMAGE SUITE. What is DIS, you might ask. Well, that's part of the problem. Although it was a decent little photo organizing/editing program, Microsoft's Digital Image Suite never gained widespread popularity. Now DIS stands for DIScontinued, as Microsoft announced recently that they will no longer make the software since many of its functions are now included in the operating system. If you use DIS, though, don't despair. The product will still be supported through April 30, 2010 and you can even still buy it while supplies last.

AUTORUNS. To find out what programs are loading on your PC at startup, you can run the Windows-resident system configuration utility called MSCONFIG. But there's another free utility called Autoruns that does the job better. MSCONFIG entries tend to be rather cryptic, for example, but Autoruns includes a line of description for each entry in plain English. Autoruns also lets you Hide Signed Microsoft Entries, which allows you to quickly narrow your focus to third-party programs. Disabling or deleting entries requires just one click (so you'll need to be careful!). This function really saved my sanity when my system was breached by a scrap of regenerative malware. www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx

Return to Herb Goldstein's Index

Return to Columnist's Index

Copyright 2007. This article is from the August 2007 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.

See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.