Sarasota PC Monitor

Review Chairman's Industry Comments (02/08)

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.

AVAST HOME EDITION. In a world of high-priced subscription antivirus programs that bog down your PC while protecting it, Avast stands out. This program is one of the few free antivirus applications that do as good a job as any of the big boys. Avast includes more than seven different kinds of shields, safe-surfing tools, and real-time virus protection for your OS, as well as Outlook. Updates automatically download and install, and Avast works with both Windows Vista and XP. Given all this, why pay? www.avast.com/ 

MERCK MANUAL. You can access the Merck Manual online. It covers diseases and symptoms in great detail. You can browse by section or search by term. There’s also an index that will help you find what you need. And don’t forget about the multimedia features. There are photos, videos and audio. www.merck.com 

HACKCLEANER. This great little freebie does an excellent job clean out many different kinds of junk from your PC, including cookies, many kinds of temporary files, Internet toolbars (called Browser Helper Objects), and unnecessary DLLs. It even includes a tool that will free up system RAM by moving data from RAM to a page file on your hard disk, to increase performance. The program also includes a nice security tool as well. It will automatically block any Browser Helper Objects from being installed on your PC — a good thing, because some of them are spyware or malicious software. www.geekclaw.com/ 

SAFER SHOPPING. A new website from Consumer Reports lists all products recently recalled by the government along with photos to help you identify each one. Www.notinmycart.org/

LINK FIXER THING. Creates a more enjoyable browsing experience by rectifying common hyperlink annoyances. This extension is created to fix a Web annoyance and has the ability to strip the javascript off of the links. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3230 

ZONEALARM FORCEFIELD. A security product designed specifically to protect you while you bank, shop, or surf dangerous areas of the Internet online. It does this by creating a virtual "bubble" around your surfing session, protecting your PC from fraudulent Web sites, phishing scams, spyware Web sites, and dangerous downloads.
http://download.zonealarm.com/bin/forcefield_x/index.html  

FOLDR MONITR. A free tool that runs in the background and watches a selected folder (and optionally subfolders) waiting for you to add photos to it. When photos appear in the folder, Foldr Monitr automatically uploads them to your Flickr account for you. www.rebeleos.com/FoldrMonitr/ 

AUTHORPOINT LITE. Converts and uploads presentations to authorSTREAM and WiZiQ, the only services that retain PowerPoint effects on the Web like PowerPoint animations, rehearsed timings, sounds, and gifs. It is Windows Vista and Office 2007 compatible. http://tinyurl.com/ynklj2 

EASY DUPLICATE FILE FINDER. This simple freebie will find duplicate files, then let you delete the ones you don’t want. Point it at your hard disk or selected folders, and it goes to work, finding duplicates. It then gives you a full report, and lets you clean them en masse, or just selected ones. There’s some nice intelligence built in as well. It tells you how much disk space duplicate files take up, for example, and lets you protect system files so that you don’t accidentally delete any important files your PC needs in order to run properly. www.easyduplicatefinder.com/ 

TASKBAR SHUFFLE. The program lets you rearrange the order of applications on your Windows Taskbar. Drag an item to another spot on the Taskbar and drop it. Use it to keep items in the exact order you want. Way cool. www1.freewebs.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.htm

TORRENTSWAPPER. Those who want to share files using the popular BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, and who also want to enjoy the social networking benefits of the Internet, should give Torrent Swapper a try. It’s unique among BitTorrent clients in that it integrates getting recommendations from others—and giving recommendations to them—inside simple-to-use file sharing software. http://bit-torrent.sourceforge.net/ 

OLDVERSION.COM is a prominent collection of software whose prior versions are either better, less expensive, or both than the latest. You may find some surprising gems here!

VIRTUAL DUB. This is a 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/ 

PCSPACECHECK is a program that shows you directory sizes of your PC drives on a easy-to-use pie chart. It also includes buttons for easy access of Windows programs such as Disk Cleanup, Temporary Internet Files, and others that can help you clean up your drives. http://pcspacecheck.googlepages.com

CHOLESTEROL RESOURCES. Are you concerned about high cholesterol? From heart-healthy diets to alternative therapies, find the information you need to be healthy. http://lowerheartrisk.specials.about.com/ 

HOW TO CLEAN A FLAT SCREEN MONITOR. Flat screen monitors require a bit of special care when cleaning. Their displays are much more sensitive and are easily scratched and damaged. Follow these easy steps to safely clean your monitor in just a few minutes. http://pcsupport.about.com/od/maintenance/ht/cleanflatscreen.htm 

AM-DEADLINK. If you’ve collected a large number of bookmarks in your Web browser, you’re aware that it’s difficult to keep all them updated. AM-DeadLink can test all of your bookmarks to see which links have expired, and it includes a handy backup feature so you can restore the original bookmark list if you accidentally delete links you need. It works with the Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera browsers. www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm 

DOWNLOAD ACCELERATOR PLUS 8.5. Downloading files from the Internet can be an excruciating experience, so an app like Download Accelerator Plus is a handy helper. As its name suggests, it can give your download speeds a boost, but it can also let you resume broken downloads, schedule downloading for times when Web traffic is reduced, and preview files while they’re downloading. It integrates with both Internet Explorer and Firefox, and features download security courtesy of ZoneAlarm. www.speedbit.com/ 

ADVANCED WINDOWS CARE. Slow down, freeze, crash and security threats are over. Advanced WindowsCare Personal is a comprehensive PC care utility that takes an one-click approach to help protect, repair and optimize your computer. It provides an all-in-one and super convenient solution for PC maintenance and protection. All work will be done with 1 click and 1 minute. This fantastic program is available free of charge. Compared with its nearest competitor, Advanced WindowsCare Personal provides the more essential and practical formula for Windows:

Removing Spyware and Adware, Preventing Security Threats, Privacy Protection, Fixing Registry Errors, Temporary Files Cleanup, Startup Cleanup, Repairing Windows, Speeding up System and 1-click Mechanism. www.iobit.com 

WININIZIO PENSUITE PLATINUM. A large collection of many famous software products that have been optimized and transformed into no-install applications to run from a USB pen-drive. Apps include IrfanView, Deepburner, Firefox, Thunderbird, and HiJack This. http://pensuite.wininizio.it/eng/index.php 

QLIPBOARD. An easy way to make videos with your voice and drawings over images and screen captures of pictures, documents, and Web pages with one click. www.qlipmedia.com/

WORD PROBLEMS OF ALGEBRA LITE. Need to brush up on (or learn) practical use of algebra? Here are word problems grouped by type (22 types are included) with complete detailed solutions. http://tinyurl.com/34ewln

TRISTANA RSS READER. An RSS newsreader that instantly alerts you of the latest news, blogs, and podcasts all right at your desktop. Tristana’s simple, three-panel interface allows you to add or remove RSS or Atom feeds at any time. www.tristana.org/download.cfm 

ASYNX PLANETARIUM. If you’re just starting out in astronomy and feel a little overwhelmed with star charting, the free Asynx Planetarium is ideal. You can grab an overview of the night sky for tonight, or for the next night you’re outside looking up. www.asynx-planetarium.com/ 

RECUVA. Un-delete files with this free, small, fast, and efficient program. Chances are, if you’ve accidentally erased a file, or something malicious like a worm of virus has done it for you, Recuva will find it. And if it hasn’t been overwritten, this program will recover it for you. We did say delete. Despite the name, and the company?s description of it as a "file recovery" utility, it’s not a recovery program in the accepted sense because it only works with an intact file system. If you’ve reformatted your drive, or there are physical errors, you’ll need something else. But if you just want a good un-delete program with a small disk footprint, then Recuva is what you’re looking for. It works on both FAT and NTFS file systems so you can undelete files on virtually any Windows PC ever made, and the interface is the very model of restrained style and efficiency. www.recuva.com 

IE7 OPEN LAST CLOSED TAB is a plug-in for Internet Explorer 7 that makes "Alt-X" reopens the last closed tab. This is very useful when you accidentally close a tab that you didn’t mean to close. Instead of trying to find it in your browser history, you hit "Alt-X" and it automatically reopens in a new tab. It also supports a Quick Tab Style View, shown when you hit "Alt-Q", which gives you thumbnails of the previous tabs you’ve closed (like the built-in IE Quick Tabs, but for previously closed tabs). You can then click on the thumbnail of the page you want to open in a new tab. www.windowsmarketplace.com/details.aspx?view=info&itemid=3119163

SKYORB VR’06. From any location in space, this freebie calculates the positions of planets, sun, and moon, as well as the rise and set times of the object’s satellites. SkyOrb quickly does 3D rendering of views from space, including solar and lunar eclipses, solstices and equinoxes. www.realtech-vr.com/skyorb/ 

RAPIDTYPING TYPING TUTOR helps you learn quick and blind keyboard typing. Program benefits: training statistics; keyboard emulation; a simple and colorful interface; personal exercise creation; free lesson choice; multiple user support; game plot. www.pinokiosoft.com/ 

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). www.jdmcox.com/

INFINITE PASSWORD GENERATOR. Will make any number of different passwords for your use at Web sites and applications. www.ikitek.com/products/Infinite-PasswordGenerator.html 

GETBYMAIL. Stay at home and have access to your office computer and vice versa, simply through your e-mail accounts. www.getbymail.com/en/ 

MIRANDA IM. The smaller, faster, easier instant messenger with support for multiple protocols. www.miranda-im.org/

Adobe's bloatware. For instance, with Foxit you can annotate a PDF with text or graphics, and save the PDF forms you fill out. www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php 

BOOKING PLANE TIX. You can book your ticket online at any time, day or night on the Internet. That’s great. But there’s one problem: You don’t know if you’re getting the best deal. Fortunately, there are sites that can help you.

One such is FlightStats. It will give you historic highs and lows for a ticket. Use this to decide whether to book a flight or keep looking. The site will also help you find travel deals. But FlightStats offers more tools to help the weary traveler. You can check the status of a flight. Or, check a flight’s historical on time rating. And if you’re flying overseas, check travel advisories and warnings. You don’t want to find yourself in the middle of a coup! You can learn the risks involved in certain countries. www.flightstats.com 

FASTSTONE IMAGE VIEWER. Convert, edit, and view images in all major graphics formats with this powerful freebie. If you want your images to look the best they can—but you don’t have a professional photographer’s budget—check out FastStone Image Viewer. This freebie lets you browse and view your images in a Windows-Explorer-like interface. FastStone image viewer supports all major image formats, including BMP, GIF, ICO, JPEG, JPEG2000, PCX, PNG, PSD, TAF, TIF, and WMF. It includes EXIF metadata support as well. You can crop, resize, flip, rotate, and adjust colors on your images and compare them side by side.

You can also convert your images from one format to another; in fact, you can even convert or resize your photos in batches. If you need to take a closer look without resizing, use the Full Screen image viewer to zoom in and size things up with the clear magnifier. Once you’re done, you can apply over 150 transitional effects in a slideshow.

Note: FastStone Image Viewer is free for personal and educational use only. Commercial users must register the software. Enthusiastic personal or educational users may make donations through the vendor’s site. www.faststone.org/ 

VSO IMAGE RESIZER Used to resize images and convert them between different formats. With VSO Image Resizer you’ll be able to send photos via email, move them from one folder to another, or free space on your hard drive.

http://www.vso-software.fr/products/image_resizer/ 

SPEED IT UP FREE will speed up any computer system running Windows XP or Vista. It works by using new hard-disk optimization technology that allows your computer to read data in some cases up to 300% faster from your Hard Drive. http://tinyurl.com/36ak73 

IGRAB. Select songs on your iPod, grab them, and transfer them to your PC. Pretty simple, really! http://tinyurl.com/2nn6rw 

8HANDS. A small and friendly desktop application that presents a concise summary of all your online social-networking activities (your MySpace and Flickr profiles, or your blog) with useful statistics (the number of friends in each network, activity meter). www.8hands.com/ 

ESSENTIALPIM is an absolutely free personal information manager can store, manage and encrypt data: day/week/month/year schedules, to do lists for keeping all your tasks up-to-date, notes (pictures, tables, any formatted text), and contacts. Offers Rijndael 128-bit encryption, MS Outlook import/export, Windows Address Book import/export, search capabilities, versatile print features, and adjustable contacts storage with unlimited fields. www.essentialpim.com/r=download 

SPICEWORKS IT DESKTOP. A free network inventory, monitoring, and help desk application. It combines the features needed every day to manage a network in a small or medium-sized business. www.spiceworks.com/ 

SAFESPACE. Eliminates the problem of malware by creating a secure barrier between your computer and the internet, protecting you and your personal information against known and unknown malware threats. www.artificialdynamics.co.uk//content/products/registerpersonal.aspx   

PDF-XCHANGE VIEWER. Allows users to view Adobe compatible PDF files and perform additional functionality. Features available include viewing, printing, exporting PDFs to numerous image-based file types, and more. www.docu-track .com/home/prod_user/pdfx_viewer/

PIDGIN. A multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks. www.pidgin.im/ 

iISYSTEM WIPER. If you’re looking for a free way to protect your privacy by cleaning traces of your Internet activity, and Windows use, iISystem Wiper is worth a try. It cleans your history list, your Autocomplete data, temporary files, cookies, Microsoft Office activity, and even traces of file-sharing activities. It’ll also clean similar information from Windows Media Player as well. http://iisoftware.net/ 

GLARY REGISTRY REPAIR. This freebie scans your Registry for problems and fixes them fast. You’ll also be able to choose which changes to accept, and which to ignore. The program creates an Undo file, so you can revert to your previous version of the Registry if problems occur. www.glarysoft.com/ 

CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL. Clipboard’s short-term memory is awful, and its long-term memory is non-existent. Slip a little virtual ginseng into Clipboard with Clipboard Help+Spell. This powerful free program automatically stores every item you select and copy. It marks every entry with the date and lets you sort the entries into groups. The Quick Filter function searches for entries containing the words you specify. www. donationcoder.com/ 

THE CONTACT MAP FEATURE OF OUTLOOK can come in very handy when you need to find directions. If you have your contact information, including addresses, stored within Outlook, you can easily get driving directions without having to do an extensive search on the Internet. To obtain directions to a specific address in Outlook 2007:

Once Outlook is open, click on your Contacts folder.

  1. Double click a contact.

  2. In the Address section, click the arrow and select the type of address you are looking for directions: Home, Business or Other.

  3. On the Contact tab, within the Communicate group, click Map.

  4. Outlook will bring up a map with directions to your contact’s address.

GOOGLE TIP: WILDCARDS. Searching is easy when you know—even generally—what you’re looking for. But how about when the word you’re seeking is right on the tip of your brain, but won’t make itself known? Use wildcards! Substitute an asterisk for exactly one word in a Google search—Pike’s Peak is * feet high—and Google will attempt to fill in the blank. Google can also handle number ranges when searching. Two periods indicate that you’re looking for a number between two other numbers. For example, Pike’s Peak trail 5000..10000 feet returns trails in the range of 5,000 to 10,000 feet. The number ranges work with currency as well—say, HDTV $500..$900.

PING TEST EASY. A handy, powerful visual ping & IP scan utility for a system administrator to check network connections. Intuitive and graphical interface lets you easily watch the state of the network and test the connection speeds of various locations. www.autobaup.com/ping/pingeasy.htm 

MIRO. Makes video on the Internet less frustrating and more enjoyable. You can subscribe to channels of Internet video, download videos, and watch them full screen, one after the other, all in one application. Internet video becomes Internet TV http://participatoryculture.org/ 

VAULTLETSUITE 2 GO. Uses Open Source 2048 bit RSA public key and 256 AES encryption, and is the easiest way to protect and control your spam-free email, passwords and important files wherever you and your USB drive may roam. https://www.vaultletsoft.com/start/downloads.html 

FURCADIA. The magical world where the animals have learned to walk on two legs and speak. Create your own avatar and start exploring the graphical environment of player-driven content in this Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). www.furcadia.com/ 

ACEFTP is a very good, free, simple-to-use FTP client, and it’ll handle pretty much any basic file transfer job you need. It’s easy to create new connections and sites, and browsing local and remote directories is a breeze. There’s also a log for keeping track of all of your file transfer activity. Also very useful is the tabbed interface, which lets you maintain multiple FTP sessions on multiple servers. http://software.visicommedia.com/en/ 

IRFANVIEW. Irfanview’s main task is to view graphics files, and it does a superb job of it. You can view just about any file format you can imagine, and display it lightning fast. It can also display thumbnails, show your files as slideshows, and play multimedia files. Given that it’s a file viewer, the program also includes a surprising number of graphics editing tools, including adding effects and cropping. And if you need to convert files from one format to another, it can’t be beat. It’s particularly effective at batch-converting large groups of files. www.irfanview.com/ 

WHAT’S HAPPENING ON YOUR BLOCK? The Internet is filled with information and news from around the world. So, sometimes you might feel adrift. But the Internet has local news and events, too. Your newspaper probably has a Web site. However, you can get more local than that! Visit YourStreet. This site features news and commentary from your neighborhood. The news and articles come from newspaper sites. But anyone can add comments. Everything is plotted on a Google map for easy reference. And if you have a blog, link to it on YourStreet. This will direct more readers to your site! www.yourstreet.com 

DOWNLOAD ACCELERATOR PLUS. This program manages every aspect of the downloading process, including letting you do multiple downloads simultaneously, turning individual download sessions on and off, as well as accelerating your downloads.The acceleration happens two ways: by downloading from the fastest servers, and by establishing multiple connections to servers. www.speedbit.com/ 

SPAMEXPERTS DESKTOP is an antispam filter that automatically intercepts e-mail before it reaches your POP3 or IMAP compatible e-mail client. The program provides compatibility with all POP3 and IMAP email clients, Multilanguage support; automatic e-mail retrieval and notification; SSL support. www.spamexperts.com:80/solutions/smes-private-users/desktop.html 

JZIP. Windows comes with a basic Zip features, but it leaves much to be desired. So any computer toolbox needs a good compression program that can compress and decompress files and create archives. No doubt you’ve heard of for-pay compression programs such as WinZip and WinRAR. But you may not heard of the free jZip, which will do everything you want an archiving and compression program to do, but won’t cost you a penny. It handles popular archive formats such as Zip, RAR, 7z, TAR and GZip and gives you high compression ratios so you save the most disk space possible. It’s exceptionally easy to use, yet offers a great deal of flexibility, such as including subfolders when you archive, splitting archives, and encrypting archives. You also have half-a-dozen compression levels to choose from, depending on how small you want archives to be, and how quickly you want to compress them. www.jzip.com 

BITZIP. Despite what you might have heard, file-sharing isn’t dead; it’s alive and well. These days, it’s done via the very efficient BitTorrent protocol. But while the BitTorrent protocol is efficient and popular, the BitTorrent client leaves much to be desired. Instead, get BitZip, an excellent freebie that uses the protocol to download files. It does everything you need, including managing your downloads, halting and resuming them, and getting recommendations from others about what files to download. You can also get a good deal of information about each file before downloading it, including where you’re downloading it from. www.bitzip.com/ 

CHANGE THE LOCATION WHERE WORD DEFAULTS TO SAVE FILES (Word 2002). The default storage location and search path for documents, templates, and so on is the My Documents folder. If you use this folder for storing most of your work, the default location is likely fine for you. Conversely, if you generally store documents in another location, you may want to configure Word to default to this location instead. You can accomplish this by following the steps that are listed below.

-Within Word, click Options from the Tools menu.
-Click the File Locations tab.
-Select the Documents item from the list.
-Click the Modify button.
-Browse to the location where you want Word to default to.
-Click OK.
-Click OK to close the Options Window.

CALENDAR MAGIC provides comprehensive coverage of 24 different calendar systems, including full-year and month calendar generation, date conversions, and month-by-month, side-by-side calendar comparisons. It also covers observed days for around 230 different countries, and Christian, Orthodox, Buddhist, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindu, Islamic, Baha’i and Sikh festivals. www.stokepoges.plus.com:80/whatsnew1.htm 

TAGKEYS. How often do you have to type your address, your phone number, or "To Whom It May Concern?" Only once if you have Tagkeys, Valutilities.com’s convenient tool for handling such boilerplate text. Tagkeys puts a tab on the right side of your screen. Clicking this tab brings out the program, so you can create, edit, or delete your boilerplates (which the program calls tagkeys). Once you’ve created one, you can insert it into any application into which you can type text by pressing a period (.), typing it’s abbreviation, and hitting the space bar. http://tagkeys.com/

TOYOTA plans to develop cars for seniors. It is teaming up with the scientist behind the popular Brain Age games. The cars will monitor drivers’ brain activity and driving patterns. In the future, the cars could feature tools that help drivers stay alert.

MEDgle. Whether we show it by the way we live our life or not, our health is very important to each and every one of us. If you’re currently relatively healthy, then it can be all too easy to take it for granted, but if this good measure of health is taken away from you by an illness, disease, or other medical condition, then you’d do anything to get it back. Because of this, it only makes sense that we’re careful to investigate what’s going on whenever we have symptoms that could be indicative of bigger medical problems. MEDgle will help you to figure out what’s going on within your body.

Some people have a habit of going overboard in researching their symptoms whenever they think that something is wrong with them, but if there is a real reason for concern, then it’s better to be safe than sorry. Using MEDgle, you can select multiple symptoms that you’re having, specify their duration, and use personalization options to pinpoint what type of person you are and what habits you have. All of this information will help the service to better understand what might be the source of the issues that you’re having. MEDgle will even suggest doctors in your area that specialize in what you need help with. The mission of this site may sound similar to WebMD, and it is, but in the world of medicine, it’s always good to have opinions from a number of sources, and take everything that you read with a grain of salt before you get diagnosed by a medical professional. http://medgle.com/  

FREE WAKER-UPPER SERVICE. There is an easy way to remind yourself to do something. You can use this free service to:

Set a wake-up call at a specific time.
Remind yourself of important events.
Remember to take medication on time.
Escape from a boring date or meeting.
Remind child or spouse to do chores.
Set reminders for tasks and follow-ups.

Using this couldn't be easier. Just go to www.wakerupper.com and set the date and time for your reminder. You can have your reminder sent as a text message to your cell phone, or your home phone, or it can be sent as an email.

many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, hard disk performance, video system information, mainboard / motherboard information, and much more...

Key features of Fresh Diagnose: System Information: Scanning your system and give a complete report about your computer’s hardware and software, for examples: mainboard information, video system information, PCI / AGP buses information, peripheral (keyboard, mouse, printer, etc.) information, Windows registry settings, and network information.

System Benchmarks: Testing your system performance, such as CPU, hard disk, CD/DVD ROM, and compare it with other systems.

Use this free software to learn more about your computer and its components, detect / diagnose problems or errors in your computer, and increase your computer’s overall performance. www.freshdevices.com/freshdiag.html 

PHOTOPLUS is the amazing photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance digital photos, create stunning bitmap graphics and even web animations. With PhotoPlus, you can easily adjust brightness and contrast, colour balance, remove red-eye and make numerous other image editing adjustments and enhancements, achieving fantastic results time after time. And best of all, you can download our standard digital photo editor, PhotoPlus 6, completely free! www.freeserifsoftware.com/ 

SWITCH is an audio file converter that can convert mp3, wav, wma, and more to the format of your choice. It’s very easy to use — just add the files you want to convert to the list, select the format you want to use, and then click the convert button. www.nch.com.au:80/switch/index.html

M8 FREE MULTI CLIPBOARD. If you ever wished you could copy more than a single clip from one document before pasting to another, M8 is for you. With M8 you can copy up to 25 times, and unlike other multi clipboards, M8 shows you a preview of each clip before you paste it. http://m8software.com/newfeatures/freeclip.htm 

BURNAWARE FREE EDITION. BurnAware Free Edition allows you to easily perform the most common disc burning tasks: write to all CD/DVD media types, including Blu-Ray; write audio CDs and DVD video files; create and burn disc images; write multi-session discs, and much more. www.glorylogic.com/ 

CROSSLOOP. A free, secure screen-sharing utility designed for people of all technical skill levels. CrossLoop extends the boundaries of traditional screen sharing by enabling non-technical users to get connected from anywhere on the Internet in seconds without changing any firewall or router settings. https://www.crossloop.com/landing.htm 

VOLUMOUSE. Provides a quick and easy way to control the sound volume on your system — simply by rolling the wheel of your wheel mouse. It allows you to define a set of rules for determining when the wheel will be used for changing the sound volume. www.nirsoft.net/utils/volumouse.html 

WINDOWS FONTS EXPLORER. A powerful font manager for Windows with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface and multi-lingual support. It helps you to see how many and what fonts are installed on your system and test them. It supports a complete view for all font types: TrueType, TrueType Collections, OpenType, Postscript Type 1, Raster, and Vector Fonts. www.download.com/Windows-Fonts-Explorer/3000-2316_4-10786169.html  

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Copyright 2008. This article is from the February 2008 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.