Sarasota PC Monitor

Review Chairman's Industry Comments (07/08)

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.

YAHOO! LIVE. Online video is certainly a hot thing right now, and it’s become easy for anyone to either watch or create their own videos on the Internet. This isn’t just some fad, either. This is the future, and many people have opted to get rid of their cable or satellite television service and stick with what they view on the Web. Most of the time what you watch online is prerecorded, but live broadcasts are becoming more commonplace thanks to services like Justin.tv, Ustream, and Qik. These live video broadcasts really bring online video to the next level, and some of the major players in the technology arena have taken notice. Yes, even Yahoo! has now thrown their hat into the ring with Yahoo! Live.

The interface is slick, and Yahoo! Live contains many of the same features that are a part of other live video services. For example, these live sessions can be embedded, and things get interactive though text chat and other means. Since Yahoo! is such a large company, you might expect their network to be able to support the demands of this service, but it’s still an experimental release, and it’s just not very stable right now. Because of this, Ustream and the others are making Yahoo! look bad, but hopefully the reliability will improve so that Yahoo! Live can become a true contender http://live.yahoo.com/ 

SAVE INK! When you buy a color printer, look for separate color cartridges. If the colors are all in one cartridge, you’ll have to replace it when one color is exhausted. The printing quality issue really aggravates me. In most cases, you can use a low-quality (or "draft") mode. That uses less ink. Printer companies usually set their equipment to default to the highest quality. Of course, they want you to use up your ink! So, set the default to the lowest quality. Click Start>>Printers and Faxes. Right-click your printer and select Printing Preferences. Select the Paper/Quality tab. Under Quality Settings, click Draft. Under Color, click Black & White. No sense in burning through your color ink unnecessarily. You can switch back to high quality and color printing when needed. Let’s say you have an important letter in Word, which includes a color picture. You would click File>>Print. Click Properties and the Paper/Quality tab. Make your changes and click OK>>OK. That changes the settings on a one-time basis.

OPEN CONTACTS is an advanced address book program for managing the contact info of individuals and organizations. Distributed as freeware, the program was designed for people who need more beyond legacy address book programs in order to improve dynamic interactions with contacts. It will allow you to look up and manage contact info. www.fonlow.com:80/opencontacts/index.htm 

ULTRASHREDDER. Delete files securely—no matter where you are—with this portable shredding program. Carrying your work on a portable USB drive is freeing, but you don’t want to leave your files lying around. For added security, use a shredding application on your portable files. UltraShredder and CyberShredder are two free portable utilities that fill the bill. http://www.xtort.net/xtort-software/ultrashredder/ 

RETURNIL VIRTUAL SYSTEM PERSONAL EDITION v2 [2.12M] [WinXP/Vista] [FREE] Designed to protect your computer from all types of software, downloads, Web sites, or anything else that might harbor viruses, spyware, and other malicious programs. Virtualization technology clones a computer’s system partition and boots the PC into this system rather than native Windows, allowing you to run your applications in a completely isolated environment. www.returnilvirtualsystem.com/index_files/rvspersonal.htm

WEBINARIA. Record your desktop screen movements, voice narration and webcam and upload them to the web free in Flash format. Using your microphone and/or webcam, quickly start recording your desktop presentation, demo or screencast. Modify the capture area from your active window to a customized area, adjust your hardware or recording quality, and edit the audio and webcam properties frame by frame. http://tinyurl.com/2k4hfl

8START LAUNCHER. A skinable, portable, innovative application launcher and tree notes. It’s a whole new way of launching programs and files, making your desktop clean and accessing/sharing notes fast and easy. Starting programs from shortcuts on the desktop and start menu is an obsolete and cumbersome process. www.8start.com/

TONETHIS. Allows you to create MP3 ringtones, truetones, realtones, cellphone wallpaper, and mobile video ringtones using your CD, MP3, WAV, iTunes, image (JPEG, GIF, BMP), and video (AVI, MPEG) collection. Version 3.5 allows you to send content from the Web to your phone - such as images on a Web page, or Flash video on a Web site. www.tonethis.com/

EMAILAYA. A lightweight email client that allows you multiple accounts, backup files, mail drive, and RSS, all in one small file. Supports working with DiskOnKey. www.emailaya.com/ 

THREATFIRE. Protect your PC against rootkits, zero-days exploits, and other threats—without interfering with your anti-virus software. If you’re looking for maximum system protection, particularly against rootkits that can hide themselves from many pieces of anti-virus software, give ThreatFire AntiVirus a try. It’s designed to work along with your existing anti-virus software to protect you against hidden rootkits as well as "zero day" exploits, which are threats that anti-virus software doesn’t yet know about.

ThreatFire AntiVirus program protects against unknown threats by using behavioral analysis rather than anti-virus signatures to scan for threats. It’s a lightweight scanner, so that it won’t bog down your system by using too many system resources or RAM. It’s customizable, so that you can set the level of protection, ranging on a scale of one to five. Note: There is a Pro version of the program available, in addition to this free one. The Pro version includes PC Tools AntiVirus. www.threatfire.com 

PORTABLE APPS SUITE is free. It contains no spyware. There are no advertisements. It isn’t a limited or trial version. There is no additional hardware or software to buy. You don’t even have to give out your email address. It’s 100% free to use, free to copy and free to share. Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind. PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It’s open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use.

SYSTEMEXPLORER. The best way to keep your PC running properly, and safe from malware, is to know exactly what programs, processes, startup programs, and more are running. That’s exactly what this program does—and even more. Not only does it identify all that, but it will also use the VirusTotal.com malware-checking site to see whether any are malevolent, will provide details about each via the Processlibrary.com Web site or Google, and give you other information about each as well. That’s just for starters. You’ll also be able to view performance graphs for your PC, see all the programs that run on startup, check IE add-ins, see what drivers are in use, and plenty more—it can’t all be listed here. SystemExplorer is a remarkable piece of work, and given that it’s free, it’s more remarkable, still. This program is donationware. It is free to try, but the author accepts and encourages donations towards further development. http://systemexplorer.mistergroup.org/ 

THE ENSO LAUNCHER makes using Windows faster and more natural. It allows you to open files or folders, jump to running programs or start new ones with just a few simple commands.

The app by default takes over the Caps Lock key, such that when you press it you see a translucent pop-up on the top of your screen. You can type a variety of commands into that pop-up, such as ‘go’ followed by a window name to bring that program to the forefront, or ‘open’ followed by a file, program name or URL to open or start the target. You can even enter the name of a Firefox browser tab to jump to that particular open Web page, or select text and type ‘google’ to run a google search using the selected text.

The designers put a heavy emphasis on ease-of-use, which comes across with welcome features such as auto- and tab-completion so you don’t ever have to type a full file or program name. You can also type help followed by any command for guidance, and the app’s Web site offers a number of useful tutorials.

The Launcher does use a fair bit of memory (around 37MB in our informal tests). Also, though it streamlines many tasks, it ironically makes it slower to turn on capslock, since you have to type part of the ‘capslock on’ command to engage it. You can tell the program to use another key, however, such as the Windows key.

Overall, the Enso Launcher is an impressive tool, all the more so for being free. If you like it, check out the also-useful and free SlickRun utility. www.humanized.com/

EASY DUPLICATE FINDER. Look at your music and picture library and see if you have any duplicates that are not needed. If you have a lot of files, then you can download programs that scan for duplicate files.
www.majorgeeks.com:80/Easy_Duplicate_File_Finder_d5695.htm

IRFANVIEW. www.irfanview.com | Free. This graphics viewer (pronounced ear-fan-view) lets you see any image file and most digital videos with just one right click. It’s that simple. You can also use this power viewer to convert files to other formats and do some quick editing and annotation.

TWEAK UI. www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx | Free. Microsoft never officially supported its ultimate UI tweaker for XP, but the utility quickly became indispensable and created the trend of other tools offering multiple UI tweaks under a single interface.

EXPLORERXP. www.explorerxp.com | Free, XP only. Another replacement for Windows Explorer, with organizational tabs. This small program nicely displays the total size of folders, not just files.

Qttabbar. www.qttabbar.wikidot.com | Free. Want to stick with Windows Explorer? It’s your choice, but you can still enjoy an advanced, tabbed interface. After installing this utility, go to Explorer, right-click the toolbar, and check "QTTabBar," then check the ButtonBar to get extra control over new tabs.

TASKBAR SHUFFLE 2.2. www.freeweb.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.htm | Free. Don’t let the Windows taskbar control you. Move the buttons for open applications anywhere you want on the taskbar, or group open documents together. It works with Windows versions all the way back to Windows 95.

VISTA TRANSFORMATION PACK. www.windowsxlive.net | Free. Are you jealous of friends who get to compute all day in good-looking Vista while you toil in ancient XP? This pack does all it can to make sure the older OS gets the visual perks of the newer. From the boot screen to the smart icons, even the control panels are Vista-ized.

PITASCHIO. pitaschio.ara3.net | Free. Make Windows behave in ways that match your style of working. This background utility minimizes windows to the tray, snaps them together as you drag, and disables specific keys (like the Windows key). It even provides stats on how much you use your keyboard.

RESIZEENABLE. www.digitallis.co.uk/pc/downloads.html | Free. Simple and to the point: Sometimes windows pop up that can’t be resized, but you want to resize them anyway. This tiny utility makes sure that all windows you encounter can be elongated as needed.

CLEANDESK ORGANIZER. www.desktopminds.com | $12. If you tend to place a lot of items on your desktop, this organizer can help clean up the digital mess. Create rules for how the organizer should treat different kinds of data ("Copy JPEG images to My Pictures," for example) and let it do the heavy lifting.

TRUECRYPT. www.truecrypt.org | Free. Want to encrypt an entire drive, even a thumb drive? TrueCrypt will do it in real time, even as you add files. A wizard assists in creation of a virtual encrypted volume, at the size of the file you want to encrypt or occupying a whole disk partition.

7-ZIP. www.7-zip.org | Free. This open-source compression manager handles RAR and CAB files and promises better compression with ZIP archives than competitors offer. It even supports a new archive format called 7z, which is, as you’d expect, 7-Zip’s default format.

FILEZILLA. www.filezilla-project.org | Free. This no-cost FTP client looks like an old-school Windows FTP tool but works on multiple operating systems and languages. It supports FTP over SSL (FTPS) and SSH (SFTP).

RIGHTLOAD. www.rightload.org | Free. Don’t use a complicated FTP client just to upload the occasional file. RightLoad lets you right-click files and send them to predetermined folders on your FTP site. After files upload, you’ll get a list of links showing where to find the files. Great for bloggers who like to upload lots of images.

MTORRENT. www.utorrent.com | Free. Whether you’re a BitTorrent power user or just do the occasional download, Torrent is a small and speedy assistant. It takes up only 220K, yet will download multiple, multigigabyte files, showing you the speeds on the fly, the number of download peers per file, and more.

DEFRAGGLER. www.defraggler.com | Free. This won’t clear the Fraggles out of the rock, but it does defragment a hard disk—or, in a nice twist, individual files. If you’re not sure what needs defragging, it’ll provide a list of files that need it. The single EXE file can run from a thumb drive.

SYSTEMRESCUECD. www.sysresccd.org | Free. How does a full Linux system on a bootable CD-ROM help Windows users? By providing access to all sorts of systems and drives (even network drives) when your computer won’t start. It may provide the best (and only) access you can get after a fatal disk catastrophe.

GPARTED-LIVECD. gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org | Free. Not just another Linux system for a bootable CD, the GParted-LiveCD tool is for setting up disk partitions as fast and painlessly as possible. It supports file systems from FAT32 to NTFS and will graphically reorganize the partitions on your drive as you desire.

SYNCBACKSE. www.2brightsparks.com | $30. Want a simple way to back up or synchronize files across drives? SyncBackSE is pretty traditional. Specify folders and create filters for exceptions, and with a single click (or even without a click, if you preschedule) all files are placed where you want. Versioning keeps multiple copies so you can roll back as needed.

DRIVERMAX. www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax | Free. Use DriverMax to back up your hardware drivers. Then, after a fresh Windows install, DriverMax puts all the drivers back in less than 10 minutes. That’s much better than reinstalling each printer, scanner, network adapter, and camera individually.

WINDIRSTAT. www.windirstat.info | Free. Short for Windows Directory Statistics, this program presents your hard drive’s directory in multiple views, some resembling Windows Explorer and others looking like nothing you’ve ever seen—files represented by colorful 3D boxes, for example. You’ll soon know what’s taking up space.

XINORBIS. www.freshney.org/xinorbis | Free. Take a hard look at every file stored on your hard disk with Xinorbis. It provides a pie chart of what you’ve got, how big files are getting, even which files you access most. You can analyze one folder at a time or analyze a couple to compare their usage.

PROCESSSCANNER. www.processlibrary.com/processscan | Free. By matching this Web-based system scanner with an ever-growing online database of processes running under Windows, Uniblue provides a massive amount of data about what’s happening above and below the surface of Windows.

RUNSCANNER. www.runscanner.net | Free. Whether you consider yourself a beginner or expert with Windows, this utility has you covered. It will scan a PC and generate a report about every program running (with your blessing or not), hardware drivers, and more. Compare it with previous scans to see what’s different, or submit the data on select help forums to get expert advice.

SYSTEM INFORMATION FOR WINDOWS (SIW). www.gtopala.com | Free. SIW’s tagline of "everything you want to know about your PC" isn’t wrong. This tool gathers and displays data on your software, hardware, network, even CPU and RAM usage. You don’t even need to install SIW; it will run from a USB key. The data it collects can be used in various reports. It’s a boon for IT managers.

XDN TWEAKER. www.xenomorph.net | Free. This tool handles settings for both XP and Vista. XdN’s tweaks aren’t mind-blowing but are nonetheless useful, and the price is certainly right.

VIRTUAWIN. www.virtuawin.sourceforge.net | Free. Virtual desktops give you access to multiple workspace "screens" even if you have only one monitor. VirtuaWin adds up to nine such virtual desktops, accessible through an icon in the system tray. It’s modular enough to accept plug-ins (such as an auto-switcher that cycles through desktops until you stop it) that won’t interfere with VirtuaWin’s core use.

DISPLAYFUSION. www.binaryfortress.com | Free. Multiple monitors of different sizes on your computer may not always provide the best visual setup. DisplayFusion assists by placing different wallpapers on each screen, even a contiguous background across displays with different resolutions. It helps control windows, too, dragging them from screen to screen.

LEAF FOR WINDOWS. www.leafnetworks.net | Free. Leaf Networks wants to make it easy to set up network file shares and streaming, even allowing Xbox game play over a network—or from your own network to a friend’s, like a consumer-level VPN. Clients are in the works for Mac and Linux to create easy shares across platforms.

CROSSLOOP. www.crossloop.com | Free. This freebie will access the screen of a second PC and allow quick file transfer. The limited remote control/screen sharing comes from integrating the open-source TightVNC (www.tightvnc.com) with CrossLoop’s simple interface.

AUTO REBOOT REMOVER. www.intelliadmin.com | Free. Ever walked away from a computer and come back to find it rebooted after doing an auto-update? That’s a potential way to lose some data. This utility prevents Windows XP from rebooting without explicit permission.

AMP WINOFF. www.ampsoft.net | Free. Sometimes, you forget to shut down. WinOFF won’t. Use it on XP or older systems to power down based on a preset schedule or even after a certain amount of CPU idle time.

INSTALLPAD. www.installpad.com | Free. InstallPad may be the closest thing Windows has to the innovative package installers used in Linux. If what you want isn’t on the default list, you have to do the work of providing URLs for each program you want to install. But after that, it takes over, handling batch installation of your favorite applications.

REVO UNINSTALLER. www.revouninstaller.com | Free. An uninstalled program in Windows is seldom completely gone. Revo aims to remove all traces. It handles the initial uninstall, then scans for the crud left behind. In addition, it can target programs running in the system tray, telling them to stop auto-starting with Windows.

REMOVE EMPTY DIRECTORIES. www.jonasjohn.de/lab/red.htm | Free. Some of the more useless things that build up over the course of time on a Windows computer are directories with nothing inside. This utility provides a color-coded list of all empty folders you can trash. They’re not all useless: Don’t dump empty temp folders your applications require (this app doesn’t know the difference).

ABSOLUTE UNINSTALLER. www.glarysoft.com | Free. Absolute Uninstaller replaces the default Add/Remove Programs control panel in Windows, checks for extra stuff to delete after an uninstall (such as Start menu entries and useless Registry keys), and, best of all, does batch removal of multiple programs at one time. If you like to experiment with multiple new programs, now you can delete them all at once. No more one-at-a-time uninstalls.

MY UNINSTALLER. www.nirsoft.net | Free. This is program uninstallation at its most uncomplicated. My Uninstaller runs from a single EXE file (no install needed), checks your list of programs that can be uninstalled, and gives you a dashboard with which to accomplish it.

TESTDISK. Www.cgsecurity.org | Free. Got a drive or partition that just won’t boot? As long as it’s not a catastrophic physical problem, TestDisk may help. Its job is to recover lost partitions, fix partition tables, and recover boot sectors. It even works on Macs.

ERASER. www.heidi.ie/eraser | Free. Never get rid of an old computer without making sure the hard drive is wiped clean. That doesn’t mean just reformatting it, but actually obliterating all data by overwriting disk sectors multiple times. Open-source Eraser can fit on a floppy disk or a USB key and do the job.

UNDELETE PLUS. www.undelete-plus.com | Free. This program tracks deletions as they happen (or scans for recently deleted files when asked) and offers a simple, one-click method to bring them back (preferably on a different disk, so you don’t overwrite what you’re trying to restore). It works on Windows 98 through Vista, and on formats from Fat12 up to NTFS.

RESTORATION. www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html | Free. No install is needed to use Restoration: It can run from a USB key to undelete files you didn’t mean to dump. It will scan a drive—including flash memory—for all recoverable files at start-up. Just filter by extension or a search string to find what you want to restore.

MICROSOFT VIRTUAL PC 2007. www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc | Free. Redmond’s entry in the virtual machine space is geared specifically toward running older versions of Windows. While it lacks some necessities (like USB device support), you can’t argue with the price. And it may be the perfect solution for running a can’t-live-without-it legacy program.

SANDBOXIE. www.sandboxie.com | Free. Normally, software installations are written to your hard drive. Using SandBoxie’s "transient storage," an application is instead placed in a safe sandbox where the app can read from your hard drive but won’t write to it. This keeps your system from potential evils, like viruses.

GOOGLE DESKTOP 5. www.desktop.google.com | Free. This software does more than just search . Google Desktop indexes all of your data files—including e-mail and instant messages—so you can find it fast. The interface includes multiple search-box configurations and an advanced search option. You can search and find your own files along with your Web search results. It places the power of the Web’s best search engine at a personal level.

COPERNIC DESKTOP SEARCH 2.2. www.copernic.com | Free. Redesigned to give better-looking results (and direct access from a search on the taskbar), Copernic combs through all the files you’d expect, as well as e-mail within Thunderbird and Outlook, and metadata on MP3, MPEG, and JPG files. Indexing happens on the fly in XP or Vista as files change, so there’s no need to spell out what files are made searchable.

INLINE SEARCH for IE www.ieforge.com | Free There’s no doubt that the inline search for text on a Web page in Firefox is superior. You can get IE 5.5 or higher to mimic it using this freebie along with Ctrl-F. The input box appears near the status bar with options to "Highlight all" found text.

GSPACE. www.getgspace.com | Free Just about everyone has a Gmail account, but few use all its gigabytes. With GSpace, put that online storage to work for all types of files. Just upload or download via the FTP-like interface integrated with Firefox.

FIREFTP. www.surfsaver.com | Free Graft a full-feature FTP client right into Firefox. It supports secure file transfers and can keep directories in sync as you surf. Just drag and drop from local to remote folders, and back again, as you desire.

PERSONAS FOR FIREFOX. www.surfsaver.com | FreeThere’s got to be a better way to change the skin on Firefox than installing all those bloated themes, right? Personas is how Mozilla will address that issue going forward: Select a persona for your browser from a menu and get a new look instantly.

FIRE TORRENT. www.wyzo.com/firetorrent | FreeYour BitTorrent downloader can be part and parcel of your browser. Though FireTorrent was originally developed for the Wyzo media browser, it took just a simple port to make it available to the larger Firefox user base.

WINBUBBLE. Are you frustrated that you can’t tweak Windows Vista as much as you’d like? Be frustrated no more. WinBubbles is here, and it will let you change just about every part of the operating system you can imagine—and then some. Want to customize the apparently uncustomizable Bubbles, Ribbons, and Mystify screensavers? You can do it. Hack the Windows Explorer right-click context menu? You can do that as well. http://unlockforus.blogspot.com/2007/11/winbubbles-features-gap.html 

WINDOWS LIVE PHOTO GALLERY. Everyone needs some way to sort, arrange, organize, and find their photos, and Windows Live Photo Gallery proves that you can get world-class software without paying a dime. Available from Microsoft, Windows Live Photo Gallery is an enhanced version of the Photo Gallery that ships in Windows Vista, but it works on both Vista and XP. It has superb organizer features, including adjustable thumbnail sizes, keyword tagging, and the ability to upload photos directly to Windows Live Spaces and Flickr. My favorite feature is the integrated panoramic stitching tool. http://get.live.com/photogallery/overview

CAM STUDIO. Member Paul Walgren says, "Here is an interesting FREE program for recording screen videos. It is like Camtasia Studio only smaller and free. There are tutorial videos on YouTube." http://camstudio.org/  What is it? CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs). Here are just a few ways you can use this software:

—You can use it to create demonstration videos for any software program. Or how about creating a set of videos answering your most frequently asked questions?

—You can create video tutorials for school or college class.

--- You can use it to record a recurring problem with your computer so you can show technical support people.

—You can use it to create video-based information products you can sell.

—You can even use it to record new tricks and techniques you discover on your favourite software program, before you forget them. :

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Copyright 2008. This article is from the July 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/ 

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