Sarasota PC Monitor
Review Chairmans Industry Comments (10/07)
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.
SUPER-GREAT XP UTILITY AND HELP COLLECTION is available at www.optimizingpc.com/ There are hints helps, programs and info galore at this immensely useful location. It's worth a trip for anyone from anywhere!
SURE DELETE. If you delete a file, it isn't really gone because Windows just marks the space they occupied as being available. And anyone with a program such as Restoration could probably recover them, meaning that personal data could get into the wrong hands. The author of Sure Delete says that this free program deletes the file, then wipes and removes the data left over. www.wizard-industries.com/
TUBESUCKER is the most powerful free YouTube video downloader and media player system on the planet. It includes a built-in media player and remote control capability. TubeSucker lets you batch download 1000s of videos of your favorite artist from YouTube. Type in a search topic or artist name, click, and go. Come back later and have tons of videos on your hard drive ready for instant playback. You can also use the super search feature to type in a search and browse through 1000s of little JPEG thumbnail picks on your hard drive, selecting only the videos you want to download. http://www.newrad.com:80/
SCREEN GRAB PRO is a free screen capture tool. It features one click grab of any screen for ease of use, timer operation, instant grab of any region, save JPEG, hotkey in any window, and current window selection list. Screen Grab Pro copies a Bitmap to clipboard ready for pasting in your favorite picture editor. www.tractionsoftware.co.uk/screengrabpro/index.html
SOLWAY'S INTERNET TV AND RADIO PLAYER is a free tool you can use to tune in Internet radio and TV broadcasts. Click the station name you want to listen to and it will start to play. You don't have to navigate to a web page first. The program sets up easily and comes prepared with dozens of radio stations from all over the world. www.theabsolute.net/sware/soltvradio.html
CRYPTAINER LE is absolutely free software that creates an encrypted file area on your hard disk-whatever is inside is theoretically off-limits to snoops, spies, and federal agents. Cryptainer also lets you create self-decrypting files, allowing you to send sensitive data to others securely. www.cypherix.co.uk/cryptainerle/index.htm
OPERA 9.21 free browser introduces Speed Dial, which improves navigation to your favorite sites. There's also fraud protection, and anti-phishing detection keeps browsing safe and secure. Other unique features include innovative widgets and a strong pop-up blocker. Tabbed browsing and saved sessions further increase browsing efficiency. You can also add your favorite search engines to the search bar and use beautiful skins to personalize your browser. www.opera.com/
NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR V9.0B1 In addition to high-speed browsing and instant-messaging capabilities, Netscape features one-click searching from the address bar; Quick Launch, which reduces the browser start-up time; Click-to-Search, which allows users to select a word within a Web page and search; improved instant messaging, including support for buddy icons, file transfers, and buddy alerts; and tabbed browsing, which allows users to view multiple Web pages in a single browser window. Version 9.0b1 adds
URL correction for common typos, in-browser voting on popular sites, a sidebar minibrowser, and compatibility with Firefox 2 extensions. http://browser.netscape.com/
JETAUDIO BASIC. Not happy with your current media player? Then it's time to switch to this surprisingly full-featured freebie. It plays many kinds of audio and video files, of course, and it also lets you rip music, burn CDs, and even record music from various incoming sources. Its built-in Internet radio player displays dozens of Internet-based radio stations.
And if confusing media players exhaust you, you'll welcome JetAudio's stripped-down interface and simple method of browsing for files. Another nice plus: You don't have to use the main player controls-a nifty little bar that appears across the bottom of your screen supports such options as playing music, ripping music, and burning CDs. www.cowonamerica.com/
WISE DISK CLEANER is a fast, user friendly, easy to use application developed to free up disk space by deleting junk files that are no longer used by any software on your system. Even the least experienced user can easily remove junk files with this tool. www.wisecleaner.com
COFFEECUP PRIVACY CLEANER allows you to clean your Internet and computer usage history, either on demand or automatically. The cleaning options include cookie management, history, visited Web sites, typed URLs, temp folders, and more. You can optionally run the program in stealth mode and on a regular schedule, and it also provides an option to securely erase the files rather than using the conventional delete method. Additional features include IE Home Page protection, Boss Key, and more. It offers support for Internet Explorer, Opera, and Netscape browsers. www.coffeecup.com
VIRTUAL DUB. This is a free wonderful file for video processing geeks. Virtual Dub is a free, open source application that is something of a "photoshop" for video. To start off with the basics, it'll capture video and let you save it. Even if that's all you want to do, this program is worth the download. But it does much more as well. www.virtualdub.org/
PHRASE EXPRESS AUTOTEXT reduces repetitive typing and manages your frequently used text snippets. Ideal for your letter templates, signatures, addresses, bank account information, and for Internet chat phrases. The autotext feature expands abbreviations into full phrases. For example, typing 'btw' expands to 'by the way' or typos like hlelo would be corrected to hello while you type. All your existing MS Office AutoCorrect entries can be imported for use into any application, not just MS Office. You can also launch programs or open documents with text shortcuts.
Entering 'calc' may open the Windows calculator program or typing 'goo' offers a Google search query on-the-fly. This keyboard macro utility is fully-functional and free for personal users. The optional Network Edition provides the PhraseExpress functionality in a company network with a professional Client-/Server architecture. www.phraseexpress.com/
JETAUDIO BASIC is integrated multimedia software made up of a single compact rack. Not only does it play various music and video files, it also has features such as CD burning, recording, and conversion to other file formats. You can create your own Internet broadcast by using JetCast, provided with JetAudio, and you can play all major file formats, including WAV, MP3, MP3Pro, OGG, WMA, MPEG, AVI, WMV, MIDI, RM, and video and audio CD tracks. Convert among audio file formats, and record analog audio to various formats.tag editing for MP3, OGG, and WMA files; sound effects including wide, reverb, and x-bass; multichannel sound output; speed control of audio playback; cross-fading for a smooth transition between two songs; a skinnable user interface; and synchronized lyrics display (karaoke) for MIDI and MP3 files.supports for video conversion for iAUDIO U3, supports ts,tp file extension, and includes video format converter to AVI. Version 7.0.3.3016 has Vista compatible audio mixer, supports WavPack playback and .wvc (Wavpack correction) files, supports video conversion for COWON L2, iAUDIO 7, adds high speed video conversion mode for COWON D2, A2, Q5 www.cowonamerica.com/
MICROSOFT SHAREDVIEW BETA. Connect with up to 15 people in different locations and get your point across by showing them what's on your screen. Share, review, and update documents with multiple people in real time. SharedView is easy to use, from anywhere, at a moment's notice. A Windows Live ID (Passport, Hotmail, or MSN) is required to start sessions, but not to join sessions. http://tinyurl.com/22nmgh
SAFARI V3.01 PUBLIC BETA. With a simple, elegant interface, the Safari browser gets out of your way and lets you enjoy the Web. Features include: fast performance; an elegant user interface, easy bookmarks, pop-up blocking, inline find, tabbed browsing, SnapBack, automatic form filling, built-in RSS, resizable text fields, private browsing, and security. www.apple.com/safari/download/
SIMPLE FAMILY TREE enables you to create and/or view a family tree quickly and easily. It displays ancestors and descendants of any selected individual (it reads and writes files in Gedcom format). You can enter notes, events, marriage details, and an alternate name for each individual. Additionally, you can see the age, birthday, and view a photo of an individual. www.jdmcox.com/
FREE HIDE FOLDERS. Sometimes the best way to keep people from prying into your personal folders is to keep their existence secret from the get go. That's easy to do with Free Hide Folders. The program lets you make any folder (and all its subfolders and other contents) completely invisible with a just a little pointing and clicking. (And no, it doesn't just use the folder's hidden attribute.) The program is password protected so you're safe even if the bad guys know you're using the product. www.newfreedownloads.com/find/hide-folders.html
REMOVE FORMATTING FROM YOUR DOCUMENT OR TEXT IN WORD. There may be instances when you need to remove all of the formatting within your document or remove all of the formatting for a specific block of text. You could click Select All from the File menu and then change the formatting to Normal. However, there is an even easier way to remove the formatting. You can select all the text at once in a document by pressing CTRL + A. Then simply press CTRL + SHIFT + N and all the formatting is removed for you. If you only want to work with a specific block of text, you need to manually select the text and then you can use the CTRL + SHIFT+ N keystrokes. All the formatting is immediately removed from the selected text.
BEWARE FAKE GREETING CARDS. There are several web sites through which you can send a virtual birthday, anniversary or other greeting card to a friend. It's a nice gesture; you construct the card, create a message to go inside and enter the friend's email address, and he/she is notified to pick up the card on the web site. Recently, though, phishers have begun to exploit this common feature, sending you fake cards with URLs that, when clicked on, will take you to a malicious site that attempts to steal information that can be used for identity theft. Even experienced Internet users are sometimes fooled. Be very careful about picking up those cards now. One clue that a greeting card message isn't legit: most of the real services give you, in the email notice, the name or email address of the sender. If the message just says "a friend sent you a card," with no identifying info, proceed with caution.
HIDDEN UTILITIES XP allows access to nearly 100 free hidden utilities that are not normally accessible to the average user. System information, diagnostics, repair tools and more in both Windows and Command Line utilities are now easily opened. Hidden Utilities XP includes easy access to 53 Windows tools and 43 Command Line utilities. http://camtech2000.net/Pages/hidden_utilities.htm
BURN4FREE CD AND DVD is a burning solution that's compatible with more than 3,000 DVD and CD burners. Burn data and audio from different file types (WAV, WMA, MP3, OGG, FLAC, WavPack, and CDA). Burn and save ISO files, open and save your project to disk, verify content, print compilations, copy DVDs, and import your audio compilation from M3U and ASX playlists. The drives supported include dual-layer DVD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM (SCSI, IDE, EIDE, and USB 1.0 and 2.0). Version 3.1 features better CD/DVD burners detection. www.burn4free.com
DEALCRITIC is a site that will not only help you to find deals, but it'll let you vote on them, too. The deals are compiled from sources throughout the Web and listed for your enjoyment. In addition, all registered users can also post any deals that they may find while browsing the Internet. The voting functionality is what really helps the site to stand out because the good stuff will rise to the top of the list due to a number of supportive votes. Comments can also be left on the individual deals so that you can see what experiences people have had with the product or the deal itself, and the related deals that are listed will give you more options to keep busy with. DealCritic feels kind of vacant at this point in time, but hopefully that will all change because the site could eventually be built into something great. www.dealcritic.com
ACTIVE@ KILLDISK - HARD DRIVE ERASER is powerful and compact software that allows you to destroy all data on hard and floppy drives completely, excluding any possibility of future recovery of deleted files and folders. It's a hard drive and partition eraser utility. www.killdisk.com
A DUMP FILE can be a useful troubleshooting tool when either the system or application crashes and causes the infamous Blue Screen of Death. However, they also can provide a hacker with potentially sensitive information such as application passwords. You can disable the dump file by going to the Control Panel, System, Advanced, Startup and Recovery. Once open change the options for Write Debugging Information to None. If you need to troubleshoot unexplained crashes at a later date, you can re-enable this option until the issue is resolved but be sure to disable it again later and delete any stored dump files.
XP CURSORS. Here's a well-designed cursor set that would be fine for the office. Most of the cursors, in Kelly green and gray, are animated yet unobtrusive. For example, the text cursor is a small I-beam that changes from blue to green; and the pointer, an easy-to-find stylized green arrow, is not animated. The files come in an executable that installs the cursor set and makes the scheme available for selection in Mouse Properties, Pointers. http://es.geocities.com/edmundoedm/eng/xpcursors.html
A-SQUARED FREE looks for spyware, adware, Trojans, worms, bots, dialers, and other neer-do-wells. Once it finds them, it will kill them for you as well. You can also choose to first put software it finds into a quarantine, to make sure that it in fact is malware, before deleting it. This program digs deep - not only will it find and kill spyware, but it will even detect "traces" such as Registry entries, and kill them as well. A-squared doesn't offer real-time spyware protection, and won't protect your PC against getting infected in the first place; for that you'll need another piece of anti-spyware. But it's free, and so is ideal to use as a second or third spyware killer on your PC. www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/
MAXIMIZING A WINDOW. When you need a really big window, don't just maximize it: go full screen! To view a window full screen, hold down the Ctrl key and double-click the window's title bar-or when the window is active, press the F11 key at the top of your keyboard-to get the biggest window possible. It's a toggle. Press F11 again to return to standard size.
MAKE YOUR OWN ICONS. It's shockingly easy to create your own icons in Windows XP. Let's do it: Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, and then click Paint. On the Image menu, click Attributes. Type 32 for both the Width and Height of the document, and make sure that Pixels is selected under Units. Click OK to create a new 32x32-pixel document: the size of an icon. Now add type, color, or do whatever you'd like to your image. I like to shrink photos (headshots work best) to 32x32 and simply paste them into my Paint document. When you're finished, open the File menu and click Save As. Use the dialog box to choose where you want to save your file, then give it a name followed by ".ico" (without the quotes), and click Save. (The extension ".ico" tells Windows that it's an icon file.) You just created an icon! Now you can change any shortcut or folder to your own icon-just browse to it on your hard drive.
ROGUEREMOVER FREE is a utility that can remove various rogue antispyware, antivirus and hard drive cleaning utilities. Rogue applications are applications that rather than remove spyware, provide false positives, distribute malware or spyware, advertise, or provide useless uninstallers. The main point is that rogue applications are useless and eat up system resources.
RogueRemover has the ability to completely remove WinAntiSpyware/WinAntiVirus, SpyAxe, VirusBlast, VirusBursters and many more! Simply download RogueRemover from the one of the links below, unzip the file, and run the installer. Start the program and select Scan and the program will walk you through the remaining steps. Compatible with Windows 2000, NT, XP, Vista. http://www.malwarebytes.org/rogueremover.php
ULTRAGET VIDEO DOWNLOADER allows you to easily download and play FLV (Flash for Video) from YouTube. This YouTube video downloader allows you to easily grab and save any YouTube videos to your local computer. The internal FLV (Flash for Video) video player enables you to easily enjoy the downloaded flash videos. With UltraGet Video Downloader, you can download YouTube videos directly into your computer and watch these files offline. www.ultraget.com
UPGRADEMEMORY.COM Memory is the single most beneficial upgrade you can make besides a new processor. Upgrading memory is a simple, quick, and easy way to speed things up. When you need memory, check UpgradeMemory.com first! Upgrade Memory provides memory upgrades for almost any computer, camera, or mp3 player you can imagine. Use their site to find exactly which memory you need.
REDUCE POWER CONSUMPTION. As laptops became more popular, consumers became aware of Win XP's power settings. Standby left your computer running at low power; hibernate saved all memory to disk and then shut down your system-but often balked at problem programs. With Vista, Microsoft redrew the rules, adding an "away mode" and defaulting to "sleep" rather than off. Sleep mode starts off like standby but saves memory like hibernate. Then after 15 minutes it just shuts off, with no back talk from programs. Nicely done, Microsoft! To shut down completely, skip the Start menu's orange power button in favor of the right arrow next to it.
ULTRAGET VIDEO DOWNLOADER allows you to easily download and play FLV (Flash for Video) from YouTube. This YouTube video downloader allows you to easily grab and save any YouTube videos to your local computer. The internal FLV (Flash for Video) video player enables you to easily enjoy the downloaded flash videos. With UltraGet Video Downloader, you can download YouTube videos directly into your computer and watch these files offline. www.ultraget.com/
THE FILTER is an innovative recommendations engine for iTunes, iPod, Windows Media Player, and Nokia phones that can save you time building playlists. All you need to do is select a song and tell The Filter to build you a playlist based around the mood of the chosen song. The Filter can also fill your iPod/MP3 player with new playlists every day - perfect for creating playlists for every day activities such as a commute or workout session. Version 2.3 adds Amazon store recommendations, and improves iPod filling capabilities. www.thefilter.com/
TAGSCANNER is a multifunction program to organize large music collections. It can edit tags of mostly state-of-the-art audio formats, rename files based on the tag information, generate tag information from filenames, and perform any transformations of the text from tags and filenames. Also you may get album info via Internet Music Database freedb.org. Supports ID3v1, ID3v2, Vorbis comments, APEv2, WindowsMedia and MP4(iTunes) tags. Powerful TAG editor with batch functions and special features. Playlist maker with ability to export playlists to HTML or Excel. Multilanguage interface. Built-in multiformat player. www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm
TASKBAR SHUFFLE. Drag and drop your taskbar buttons and system tray icons to instantly reorder them. No need to get all nervous when a program crashes or if you need to reboot; you can reorder your programs exactly as they were. Version 2.2 includes an option to rearrange your tray icons, Vista support, and doesn't store settings in registry anymore. www.freewebs.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.htm
PICASA is a popular, free, flashy and functional digital photo organizer and editor which has improved considerably since its first release. Picasa is excellent for beginners and casual digital shooters who want to find all their pictures, sort them into albums, do quick edits, and share with friends and family. Folks with very large photo collections and more advanced editing needs should look elsewhere.
Pros: Picasa is free. Integrates with other free Google services (Blogger, Web Albums, and Hello).
Provides good red-eye removal, quick fixes and effects, and online sharing options.
Editing info is stored in INI files, making all edits reversible without saving multiple versions.
Display your pictures as a custom screensaver, collage, or slide show movie.
Designed for non-techies and casual digital photographers.
Cons: Uses a folder-based system of organization.
Edits are not displayed outside of Picasa.
Limited organizational and searching features.
No way to edit a photo's embedded date.
Litters your computer's folders with Picasa.ini files. www.picasa.google.com
ACSSOFT PHOTO MOVIE ALBUM. This software scans your PC for your photos and movies, and builds the albums for you automatically. You can create a new album from your digital camera, which copies the photos and movies via the USB port to your PC. You can record a voice message, create notes, set slide-show speed, set password protection, and choose background music. The order of the display can be by filename, creation date, or sequence number. The search can be done on the filename, creation date, or sequence number, or on any words in the notes, album, or subject name. The photos and movies can be installed together with the royalty-free Album Viewer to CD-R; they also can be published as Web pages to the Internet. It can read the digital camera and save the photos and movies to your PC. www.acssoft.net/
COMPARE DRUG COSTS. Are you struggling with the costs of prescription drugs? If so, you're not alone. Fortunately, the Internet can help you save some money. Just visit DestinationRx. Type in the name of a drug. Verify the name and select the quantity you need. You'll get a list of reputable pharmacies that sell the drug. You'll see the price for refills, along with the cost of shipping. But DestinationRx can offer even more help. It lists lower-cost alternatives to brand-name drugs. You may need to register to access some features.
AVG ANTI-ROOTKIT. One of the most feared of all types of malware is the rootkit, software that is nearly undetectable - and in fact, can't be detected by many, if not most, anti-malware - and can then be used for all kinds of nefarious purposes. Not uncommonly, rootkits are used to hide Trojans, that can then be used to take over your PC without your knowledge. The free AVG Anti-Root is designed to protect you. It does one thing, and one thing alone: finds and kills rootkits. Run it and it scans your PC, sniffing them out. When it finds any, it removes them. Note that it doesn't work with Windows Vista. www.grisoft.com/doc/download-free-anti-rootkit/us/crp/0
EULALYZER. Can't stand to read End User License Agreements? Let this freebie give you the highlights. No one puts End User License Agreements at the top of their reading list. Failing to read these, though, can results in privacy risks, unwanted software, and other nasty surprises. You should always read EULAs from end to end, but EULAlyzer makes it easier to home in on the important parts. To start, click the plus-sign button in EULAlyzer and drag it to the text requiring analysis. You'll see the text appear in the program's window. When you click "analyze," EULAlyzer searches the document for what it calls "words of interest" (reminiscent of a "person of interest" in a police investigation). EULAlyzer then assigns its Interest Rating to the program. You can then search the entire EULA for keywords-"trial," for instance-and pull up further data on the product. Of course, EULAlyzer is no substitute for reading the EULA. Whenever you want to install software, you should read the EULA first, period. But EULAlyzer does save you time and effort. You can also save EULAs in EULAlyzer, so you can check back later if you think a program's not treating your PC (or your privacy) as kindly as it promised it would. www.javacoolsoftware.com/ ZIPGENIUS 6 STANDARD can create archives in a few other formats as well (including .zip and .tar), and will extract a variety of others like .rar or .ace, plus .iso and .nrg disc images. Support for .arj, .arc, or .lzh archive extraction requires external programs. ZipGenius 6 Standard offers support for CryptoZIP 2.0, AES-128, BlowFish-128, and TwoFish encryption. www.zipgenius.it/eng/index.php
BELARC ADVISOR V7.2T Builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, including Microsoft Hotfixes and software serial numbers, and shows the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any Web server. www.belarc.com/free_download.html
DEVICESCAPE enables your Windows laptop to connect automatically to Wi-Fi hotspots and home networks without having to enter usernames, passwords, and security keys. Support for over 160,000 paid and free hotspots around the world. www.devicescape.com/pub/
WISE REGISTRY CLEANER. 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, even the least experienced user can easily repair registry with this tool. It scans the Windows registry and finds incorrect or obsolete information in the registry. www.wisecleaner.com/
MOZILLA FIREFOX V2.0.0.6 is a fast, full-featured Web browser that makes browsing more efficient than ever before. Includes pop-up blocking; a tab-browsing; integrated Google searching; simplified privacy controls; a streamlined browser window; and a number of additional features. www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ :
DEBRIEF NOTES. [Basic Edition is free] Manages notes for ideas, journals, tasks, contacts, issues, meetings, changes, risks, decisions, milestones, research, planning, and more. Notes, folders, and calendars are handled intuitively for organizing work. It emulates spiral notebooks, file folders, work in progress, reference material, and action items. http://debriefnotes.com/products.htm
MEMORY CLEANUP. Check the health of your system's memory. If your system crashes often and you're getting blue screens loaded with error messages, your problem may be bad system memory. Use this diagnostic tool from Microsoft for a quick checkup. http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp
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Copyright 2007. This article is from the October 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/
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