Review Chairman's Industry Comments (09/10)
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.
SECUNIA PSI. Here’s one of the best ways to optimize
your PC: Make sure that all of your applications are patched and
up-to-date. That way, they’ll run faster and be more secure, and so will
your PC. Unfortunately, visiting the Web site of every one of your
applications can be so time-consuming that you’ll never get around to
doing it. So instead, get this freebie. It scans your system, lists all
of your applications, and then regularly checks if any don’t have
security patches. When it finds a patch, it applies it.
http://secunia.com/
HOUSECALL. Your ailing PC might not need a trip to
the computer ER. Free Web-based utility HouseCall scans for and cleans
your computer of all currently documented viruses, Trojans and other
malware. In addition, it seeks out firewall problems and other
vulnerabilities, and makes suggestions for correcting them. We do not
recommend using HouseCall exclusively; an installed security program is
important for any PC’s health. But HouseCall has saved our computers
numerous times, when all else had failed.
HouseCall, a product from respected security software
company Trend Micro, works in most major Internet browsers. The user has
a choice between running HouseCall under ActiveX or Java VM Core Engine.
To use ActiveX, you need to be sure that your browser’s security level
is such that it won’t block it, and that signed ActiveX objects are
enabled. To use the Java engine (which is easier), your system has to
have Java installed; if it doesn’t, it’s a free download from
www.java.com.
Trend Micro is known for its aggressive and frequent
updates of malware definitions, which means that HouseCall catches the
vast majority of malicious files that might lurk in your system. But,
because of its thoroughness, HouseCall can be time-consuming and
sometimes bogs down. It’s best to run it at a time when you aren’t
planning to use your computer, such as overnight.
HouseCall is a great resource for anyone who suspects
that their computer woes may be related to malicious files or security
vulnerabilities—or for those who just want to double-check that their
installed security program is doing its job.
housecall.trendmicro.com/au/
MCAFEE FREESCAN. Detect viruses on your computer
with this free tool, based on McAfee’s VirusScan engine. FreeScan
searches for viruses, including the latest known "in the wild" viruses,
and displays a detailed list of any infected files. Should viruses be
found, FreeScan links to information about the virus and tells you what
you can do to clean your system. FreeScan uses ActiveX components to
initiate scanning. The first time you access FreeScan, the required
ActiveX components are downloaded to your computer. The user interface
is an HTML page.
http://home.mcafee.com/Downloads/FreeScan.aspx
PANDA ACTIVESCAN. Do you suspect that your hard
drive may have been infected by a virus or a Trojan horse? Are you
getting conflicting reports from your antivirus software? Panda
ActiveScan, a free online antivirus utility, will allow you to detect
and eliminate any of over 90,000 viruses and Trojan horses. You can
access this utility from a Web site, but you cannot download it onto
your computer. It uses Microsoft ActiveX technology and works within
your browser. ActiveScan is updated at least once a day, and can scan
e-mail messages and compressed files.
ActiveScan looks for other malware, too: dialers,
hacking tools, jokes, and security risks. Its heuristic system detects
even some unknown malware. Note: ActiveScan is a service, not a
download, so you won’t be installing any programs. When you click the
link, you’ll be directed to Panda Software’s site, where you can use the
free service. If you have not used the service before, you may need to
install its ActiveX controls.
www.pandasecurity.com/usa/
ASHAMPOO PRESENTATIONS 2008. Want serious
presentation power, but without paying PowerPoint’s full freight? Then
you’ll want to try Ashampoo Presentations. This lower-priced alternative
offers many of the major features of PowerPoint, without busting your
budget. This inexpensive presentation program includes what are to many
people the most important features of PowerPoint: easily building
presentations; inserting graphics and other objects; nifty animated
transitions between slides; and multiple views of a presentation for
easy creation, management, and editing.
The program also reads PowerPoint presentations, and can
save presentations in PowerPoint format or in a variety of other
formats, including graphics formats. It can even export presentations as
PDFs. You should be aware, though, that PowerPoint has a number of
powerful features that you won’t find in Ashampoo Presentations 2008,
such as "SmartArt," which lets you easily build sophisticated graphics
such as organization and relationship charts and then insert them into
your presentation. And Ashampoo Presentations also include fewer
multimedia tools, such as the ability to record narrations and
incorporate them into presentations. So if you’re a true presentation
power user, you may not be satisfied with the program. But if you don’t
need many high-end features, Ashampoo Presentations will save you money
compared to PowerPoint, and is well worth a look—and potentially, a
purchase if you want a $20 alternative to PowerPoint..
ZUMODRIVE WINDOWS CLIENT. Need more storage for your
tiny netbook hard drive? Not enough space on your iPhone for all your
music? ZumoDrive promises to solve conundrums like these by keeping your
files in the cloud but making them accessible in real-time, just as
though they were local. In other words, it’s a virtual hard drive that
lives online. www.zumodrive.com/
CODYSAFE. Why use a USB flash drive as a mere data
shuttle? The free CodySafe is one of the cleverest ways you can find to
turn a USB flash drive into what the developer calls a "computer on a
stick." Install CodySafe on a USB stick, and it lets you take
applications along with you, managing them along with your documents and
the drive itself. The beauty of this approach is that you can plug your
USB drive into any computer, and never actually have to store data on
the computer or use the computer’s resources. With CodySafe, everything
can be done from the USB drive itself.
Install CodySafe on a USB flash drive, and when you run
it from the drive, it looks very much like the Windows Vista Start menu.
Install programs to the drive, and they show up on the CodySafe menu,
just as they do in Vista; run programs by clicking on them. CodySafe
also includes quick navigation to folders it creates, including
Documents, Pictures, Music, and Video.
CodySafe also includes features for managing your USB
drive, including a "Drive Doctor" for checking the health of the drive,
an applications manager, and a "Find-if-Lost" feature that lets anyone
who finds the lost drive find out your contact information so that they
can get it back to you.
Vendor Codyssey.com also has a number of portable
applications at their site that you can download for free to your USB
drive, as well as links to other portable applications. Once you’ve got
your USB drive set up the way you want, carry it with you, plug it into
any computer, and you’ve got your applications and data, all within easy
reach. www.codyssey.com/products/codysafe.html
RESTORATION. We’ve all done it: accidentally deleted
a vital file a few minutes before an urgent deadline—and then couldn’t
find it in the Recycle Bin. Fortunately, there’s no need to panic, yet.
Restoration is a free program that can scan your hard drive, floppy
diskette or USB thumb drive and find files that have been deleted
(Windows doesn’t actually destroy files that you delete: it just marks
the space they occupy as being available). It can then recover any
recently deleted files it finds with a single mouse click.
You can filter the results if you know the name of the
file you are looking for, which is much easier than wading through the
list of the hundreds of deleted files it usually finds (including
temporary files, cached Web files, etc).
Restoration doesn’t need to be installed to work. Just
keep the program on a floppy or an optical disc and pop it into the
drive and run it when you need it (This approach also prevents your
accidentally overwriting the deleted file). Although the program has not
been updated since 2004, it still worked well in my informal tests and
it recovered several files that I had deleted without problems.
www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html
FREERASER. Simply deleting doesn’t actually get rid
of the file or its data—it can be reconstructed relatively easily. If
you’re worried that someone might invade your privacy by restoring files
you’ve deleted, give Freeraser a try. It’s as simple a program as you’ll
ever find for killing files so that they stay killed.
How easy is it to eliminate files? Run the program,
select a file to delete, and it’s gone. The program doesn’t just delete
a file; it first fills the contents of the file with random data, then
deletes it. That way, if someone reconstructs it, they’ll see only
random data.
Freeraser has three levels of settings for deleting
files. The "Fast" one fills the contents of a file, then deletes it, and
as the name implies, this is the fastest. The "Forced" mode is slower,
and first fills the file with three separate rounds of data. According
to vendor Codyssey, Freeraser uses an algorithm approved by the U.S.
Department of Defense. And Ultimate is the slowest, filling the file
with 35 rounds of data, using the Guttman algorithm. The program claims
that it is impossible to recover the data in the file destroyed in this
way.
If you’re worried at all about old files coming back to
haunt you, Freeraser is an easy, effective way of making sure those
files don’t come back from the dead.
www.codyssey.com/products/freeraser.html
DISKDIGGER goes well beyond the usual undelete
utility that’s offered gratis as a leader product, though as of version
0.8 it does that. It will also dig "beneath the file system" (Dmitry’s
line, which I plan to borrow regularly in the future) to recover data on
a sector-by-sector basis from hard drives, thumb drives, etc. (Think of
sectors as little boxes containing data that are arranged in
tracks/circles on your hard drive.)
DiskDigger couldn’t be easier to use. Select a drive,
select the types of files to be recovered (jpeg, mp3, documents, etc.)
then click next. I actually had a brand new partition-trashed hard drive
on hand to test DiskDigger with. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting a free
program to recognize the hard drive, let alone recover data from it. It
found files—and recovered them.
My only complaint is that if the type of file you’re
looking to recover using a sector scan (it will undelete any file type)
isn’t in the DiskDigger’s list, it won’t find it. Common types that are
missing are Outlook personal folders and text files. There should be a
"*.*" option or the ability to define file types. Still, many common
file types are there and that should cover the majority of home users.
New for version 0.8.1 is the ability to search ISO disk
images for missing or existing files. You may now also limit a search to
a logical drive (some disks are partitioned into multiple logical
drives: C:, D:, E:, etc.) instead scanning the entire physical drive.
DiskDigger is a free, easy-to-use recovery program that in many cases
works as well as EasyRecovery Professional, Active@ File Recovery, etc.
If you need to recover data, your mouse should run, not walk, to the
download link. http://dmitrybrant.com/diskdigger
ABIWORD is a free word processing program similar to
Microsoft Word. It is suitable for typing papers, letters, reports,
memos, etc. It is designed to integrate perfectly with the operating
system it runs on. It will take advantage of the functionality provided
by the system, such as image loading or printing capabilities.
http://majorgeeks.com/AbiWord_d5325.html
GIGATRIBE. If you like sharing files and social
networking sites, welcome to the GigaTribe. This software-and-service
combo lets you share any files and folders on your PC with friends and
other contacts, and it lets you get access to their files and folders as
well. Setup is remarkably simple: Install the software, decide which
files and folders to share, and invite friends. From that point on, your
buddies can download any of your shared files and folders, and you can
do the same with theirs.
There are a lot of nice little extras in GigaTribe. For
example, you can search for a filename in your contact’s folders, and
you can pause and resume downloads. You can also preview graphics files
before downloading them, to make sure that you’re getting the right
picture, if you’re looking to share pictures. There’s also a chat
module.
The software also solves an increasingly thorny
problem—how to share large files with others. Many e-mail services and
ISPs have limits on file sizes, but there’s no file size limit with
GigaTribe.
Note that you may have to tell your firewall to let
GigaTribe access the Internet. Also, after 31 days, you will have to
transfer files using the slower direct connection method, rather than
the "EasyConnect" method. EasyConnect can speed up transfers and
bypasses any potential firewall issues. To get EasyConnect again, you
must upgrade to the paid "Ultimate" version, which is available in
monthly ($5) and yearly ($30) licenses.
The "Ultimate" version includes additional features,
such as the ability to download files faster from multiple sources,
simultaneously downloading several files at once, and the ability to
have more than 500 friends. You’ll figure our pretty quickly whether the
standard version suits your needs, or whether you need Ultimate.
www.gigatribe.com/en/home
UTORRENT. The BitTorrent standard is the best
protocol for sharing files, but the uTorrent client is better than the
BitTorrent client: It has lots of extras, such as a configurable
bandwidth scheduler and global and per-torrent speed limiting.
www.utorrent.com/
FCLEANER is a freeware all-in-one Windows cleaning
and optimization tool. It removes unused files that are eating up your
disk space and slowing your system down, tweaks your system, and allows
your Windows to run faster. FCleaner can also protect your privacy by
eliminating Internet history and the cookies that Web sites leave
behind. You can erase all the traces of your online activities in just
one click with the help of FCleaner. No experience or computer skills
necessary! FCleaner is free and does not contain any spyware or
adware.http://majorgeeks.com/FCleaner_d6021.html
YOLA gives all of us the tools that we need to
quickly and easily build a Web site. If you can use a mouse and a
keyboard, then you’re good to go. The price is also right because the
service enables you to build and host your site for free without any of
those crazy obtrusive ads that some other free services offer. The
sample sites that they’ve featured give you a taste of what you can
expect, and while Yola can’t promise you that your site will win any
design awards, this service should prove to be the right fit for a lot
of people. www.yola.com/
MEDIAMONKEY is the music organizer for the serious
collector. Manage a music library consisting of small to very large
collections (50,000+) of audio files and playlists, whether they’re
located on your hard drive, CDs, or a network. Organize, browse, or
search music by genre, artist, year, rating, etc., and never waste your
time trying to find mp3s you know you have. Automatically identify
tracks that are missing information, whose tags are not synchronized, or
that are duplicated elsewhere.
http://majorgeeks.com/MediaMonkey_d4907.html
MARXIO FIKE CHECKSUM VERIFIER. A checksum is a
string of characters which uniquely identifies a file, a digital
fingerprint. Change even a few bytes of a file—for example, by infecting
it with a virus or replacing an old version with new one—and the
checksum changes. Marxio File Checksum Verifier is a small, standalone
utility which will generate a checksum for a given file and then compare
it to an earlier value.
is very simple in operation. Either drag a
file to the window, or select one using a standard file dialog. Then
choose a checksum algorithm, such as MD5 or CRC32. (If you’re the target
audience for this tool, you know what those things mean.) Then paste a
checksum from a known version of the file into the bottom text box, and
check! Marxio will quickly tell you if they match or not. (Very large
files may take a while, but Marxio will run minimized and flash the
taskbar when it’s done.)
There are several uses for this program. For example,
freeware programs are often distributed by many different sites, some
not trustworthy. If you have a checksum of a known copy of a program,
you can compare a downloaded copy to be sure you’re not getting one with
a virus or a Trojan. Checksums can also be used to validate that two
sets of compressed data contain the same files, without opening each
archive and manually checking the contents against each other.
There is not much more to say. There are a decent number
of options hidden in the Options menu, including maintaining a history
file and shell integration. Marxio File Checksum Verifier is
donationware, so if you use it and like it, send along a little money to
fund future development.
www.marxio-tools.net/en/marxio-fcv.php
IDENTITY FINDER FREE EDITION 3.6. Right now, social
security numbers, credit cards, bank accounts, passwords, and other
highly sensitive personal information are sitting idly on your computer
leaving you and your family exposed to identity theft. You may not be
able to find all the places it’s hidden, but hackers and thieves know
where to look. They have developed viruses, spyware, back doors and
other malicious code to steal this information. Anti-virus,
anti-spyware, and anti-spam don’t offer in-depth searching to protect
you and your family. Identity Finder goes deep, searching the computer
to locate and secure potentially dangerous data - even when you don’t
know it exists.
http://majorgeeks.com/Identity_Finder_Free_Edition_d6087.html
CFONT PRO was developed as a way to manage system,
printer, and currently uninstalled fonts. Cfont Pro lets you view
installed system fonts, printer fonts, and a special mode where you
select a directory, CD, or network drive and preview the fonts. Preview
All mode will let you view all of your installed fonts in a single view
with printing capabilites. Also, be sure to check out the SlideShow mode
where the application will cycle through each font at an interval
determined by you. http://majorgeeks.com/Cfont_Pro_d5815.html
STARTUP DELAYER lets you place a delay on each of
your startup programs, so that each one has time to launch before
another begins making demands. In my tests I kept firewall, antivirus,
and other vital programs starting up ASAP, and moved things like Java
Updater and Snagit to the back of the line. Startup was much smoother
than usual. I was able to launch work apps while minor utilities loaded
themselves in the background.
www.r2.com.au/software.php?page=2&show=startdelay
UNDELETEPLUS. Operating System: Windows NT, Windows
98,Windows 2000,Windows Me,Windows XP,Windows Vista,Windows Server 2003
UndeletePlus 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 they can
likely be restored. Tell the program to restore your files, and they
come back from the dead. www.undeleteplus.com/
RECUVA. Operating System: Windows NT,Windows
98,Windows 2000,Windows Me,Windows XP,Windows Vista Chances are that if
you’ve accidentally erased a file, or something malicious like a worm of
virus has done it for you, Recuva will find it. It works on both FAT and
NTFS file systems so you can undelete files on virtually any Windows PC
ever made. http://www.recuva.com/
DRIVERMAX is a powerful free utility which helps you
download, back up and restore the drivers installed on your Windows
Vista or Windows XP computer and check if newer versions are available.
Download all drivers from one place in just a few steps. Or back them up
so you will have all of them in a single place and will be able to
reinstall them in a few minutes. This tool can save you a lot of time
when reinstalling Windows, especially on older computers for which the
original CDs containing the drivers have been lost.
You no longer have to track down old driver installation
CDs, insert one installation CD after another or spend hours searching
for drivers on the Internet. DriverMax is also able to display a
detailed report about all drivers (versions, release dates) installed on
your system. Identify unknown devices in your computer and get Windows
Vista rating information before you purchase new hardware. Version 5
added driver rollback and restore point functions, improved the
Drivermax Agent, increased download speed.
http://download.cnet.com/DriverMax/3000-2098_4-10572602.html
A BETTER SCREENSHOT UTILITY. Sometimes you need a
picture of what’s on your computer screen. Every computer has the
ability to take these screenshots. But that utility can be a pain to
use. In Windows, you can take a shot of your entire screen. Just hit the
Print Screen button. Or in Vista you can use the Snipping tool. But it’s
not exactly the most user-friendly tool. There has to be something
better. That’s where Greenshot comes to the rescue. It puts a variety of
screenshot tools at your fingertips. It runs in the background. And it
adds keyboard shortcuts for different screenshot types. Of course, you
can still capture the full screen. But you can also grab just the window
you’re using. Or you can click and drag to capture a custom region. Save
the screenshots wherever you want. Or modify them with the built-in
image editor. A better screenshot utility.
http://greenshot.sourceforge.net/
AMAZING JIGSAW. Amazing Jigsaw offers dozens of
puzzles with beautiful photos, and challenges range in difficulty from
easy to medium to hard. The software works as you would expect. Simply
grab pieces and move them around; you can also easily rotate the pieces.
www.freegamepick.com/en/
ENHANCEMYVISTA FREE. Operating System: Windows
Vista. When you mouse over a taskbar icon in Windows 7, you get a pop-up
thumbnail preview of the program (if it’s running). And if you’re
running multiple instances of a program you’ll see multiple thumbnails.
To get the same effect in Vista, install EnhanceMyVista Free.
www.seriousbit.com/enhancemyvistafree/
AEROPEEK. Operating System: Windows XP,Windows
Vista. Ever wonder why program windows aren’t transparent? AeroPeek
fixes that. Just click to activate this freebie and then again to
deactivate. Your open windows turn see-through, allowing you to see the
desktop behind them. http://fogelsoft.extra.hu/
DIRSYNC PRO (DIRECTORY SYNCHRONIZE PRO). If you need
to synchronize documents between a laptops to your main desktop, it’s
hard to find a better program for the task than DirSync Pro. I highly
recommend it to anyone whose sync needs extend beyond Windows Briefcase.
http://directorysync.sourceforge.net/
USBDEVIEW is a small, free utility that lists all
USB devices that are currently connected to your computer, as well as
all USB devices that you’ve previously used. For each USB device,
extended information is displayed: device name/description, device type,
serial number (for mass storage devices), the date/time that device was
added, Vendor ID, Product ID, and more. USBDeview also allows you to
uninstall USB devices that you’ve previously used, and disconnect USB
devices that are currently connected to your computer.
http://majorgeeks.com/USBDeview_d6115.html
MAXTHON borrows Internet Explorer’s basic features,
grafting on tabbed browsing and newsfeed support (for IE 6 users) and ad
blocking, mouse gestures, and skins. (If you make a donation to Maxthon
International, you can also enable a bookmark upload service). Maxthon
also pre-populates the browser with handy newsfeeds and site- and
content-specific plugins. As we went to press, the company had released
a beta of version 2.0, featuring a cleaner program layout, a more
customizable interface, and multiple user profiles.
www.maxthon.com
XMARKS (FORMERLY FOXMARKS) FOR INTERNET EXPLORER.
Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) for Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer
users, rejoice! Now you can keep your bookmarks in sync across multiple
PCs, just like Firefox users. Xmarks is the tool that makes it possible.
Previously a Firefox-only add-on, Xmarks (formerly known as Foxmarks) is
now available for Internet Explorer and Safari.
Say, for example, you use Firefox at home, but at work
you’re stuck with Internet Explorer (not that there’s anything wrong
with that).
Xmarks will keep your bookmarks in sync between the two
PCs and the two different browsers. It also makes your bookmarks
available online from any PC, smartphone, and so on. Just be sure to
check the settings before you perform the initial synchronization, as
Xmarks gives you the option of merging or overwriting bookmarks in one
direction or the other. You’ll want to give some thought as to how the
first sync should go.
Unfortunately, Xmarks for IE and Xmarks for Safari lack
one key feature: password synchronization. For now that remains
exclusive to the Firefox version. Even so, this is a must-have tool for
anyone who runs multiple PCs (and/or Macs) and wants to keep a
consistent, automatically updated set of bookmarks on all of them.
www.foxmarks.com/
FLASHGET. If you live to download, here’s a great
freebie for you. This download manager will speed up your downloads,
keep you safe, and help you organize everything you’ve downloaded. It
speeds up your downloads by using multithreading, and lets you find
downloads via many different protocols, including HTTP, FTP, eMule, and
others. It’s also great at file management, showing you all the files
you’ve downloaded, including information about each. You’ll even be able
to delete downloaded files from directly in the program. Making it even
more useful is that it integrates with your browser, so whenever you
download it jumps into action. It will also pause and resume downloads,
and works with your anti-virus software to scan for viruses as it
download.
www.flashget.com/index_en.htm :
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Copyright 2009. This article is from the October 2009 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:
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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
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See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor,
go to the Newsletter Section.