March 17, 2008 by pilot
Everybody knows that I favor several free DVD players such as VideoLAN, Kaffeine, GOM Media Player, etc. Pretty good software, mostly. Last Saturday night, however, none of them worked well enough in either Windows or Linux to play a DVD of “Rendition” that I rented from Hollywood Video. Check out a related discussion at the VideoLAN forum.
OTOH, I still have the copy of Nero 7 Essentials supplied with my Sony DVD burner and *that* played the “Rendition” DVD just fine, after I installed it. Nero occupies some considerable space on my drive (that’s why it didn’t get installed before now); currently, I dual boot WinXP & OpenSuSE on a 40 GB drive. Damn.
Posted in Linux, Windows, freeware, open source | No Comments »
March 10, 2008 by pilot
One or two of my previous posts strayed from my blog’s central theme so today we get back to the business at hand by considering ten overlooked tiny apps (under one megabyte) that may not change your life, but are still very cool:
- Janne Huttunen’s amazing WinXP (& Vista) file indexing utility Locate32 tops my chart with an 865k download. Locate32 v3.1.8.3090 was released 3/9/08. Donationware.
- Jean-Yves Lefort’s streamtuner v0.99.99 (796k binary download) for Linux works well for SHOUTcast streams via XMMS. Too bad the author ended development. streamtuner accommodates the open source Streamripper 1.62.0 for recording. Freeware.
- According to the author’s web site, Caffe1ne v1.5 (10k download) is a “Tiny utility to prevent your PC from locking, sleeping or activating screensaver after idle time determined by various system settings.” I use it every day. Freeware for Windows.
- Mouser’s TapTap Hotkey Extender (432k download) is released as v1.03.01 Beta, but I’ve experienced no issues in WinXP, beta or not. I use it in conjunction with Clavier+ to doubleclick a shift key invoking the hot keys for ProcessExplorer. Donationware.
- Mmm free v2.02 (860k download) WinXP context menus organizer. Freeware.
- KWorldClock (about 650k, depending on the distro) is a cool world clock for the KDE desktop in Gnu/Linux.
- This app was recommended to me by one of the alt.comp.freeware folks. That’s right, it’s Neutron 1.06 (7k download) time synchronizer for Windows.
- Steve Gibson’s SpinRite v6.0 is the supreme tiny app (about 200k). No other utility does what SpinRite can do for hard drives. Shareware.
- Tidy Start Menu v3.4 should really be more widely known more than it is now. Freeware.
- I use the WinXP version of Virtual Magnifying Glass 3.3.1 (780k) by invoking the program via the TapTap utility. Nice one. Open source.
Posted in Linux, donationware, freeware, open source, shareware | No Comments »
March 8, 2008 by pilot
I surfed to one of my recommended software giveaway sites this morning, but the site was down so I fired up Google search in Opera for cached access. Opera warned: “The page you are trying to open has been blacklisted as fraudulent. It will likely attempt to trick you into sharing personal or financial information. We strongly discourage visiting this page.” No doubt about it; another good site got hacked.
Opera has some basic fraud protection, and I encourage you to enable it, if you use Opera. I routinely surf with McAfee’s SiteAdvisor and Noscript extensions enabled in Firefox. OTOH, I don’t surf with IE, period. Nor do I launch my browsers from Windows for ordinary surfing. I still use WinXP, of course: too many great apps to ignore.
These days I advise receptive Windows users to do their casual web surfing from a Gnu/Linux or Mac platform. This is the single best thing that you can do to protect yourself when web sites get hacked since the attack vectors are almost always unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows-centric software.
Posted in Windows | No Comments »
March 6, 2008 by pilot
If you’re like me, you use Windows. In fact, WinXP Pro made me a Windows enthusiast. Slick, runs on nearly any modern PC, light on resources & easy to use–up to about three years ago.
About that time, WinXP started becoming a pain. For me, it’s the matter of software updates. And, in three years it’s only gotten worse. You know the drill: nowadays, you surf to Secunia.com to run an online security scan. The scan advises you to ditch your old versions of Java or Flash. You install updates, rerun Secunia’s scan, then dig out any vulnerable modules not otherwise removed by the new versions and rerun the scan. The icing on the cake is wrestling with several security applications simultaneously (Sandboxie, DefenseWall, Comodo Firewall Pro & SpySweeper) to get them to work again.
After I get my updates, the world stops because I do drive image backups.
Fortunately, about three years ago I also discovered Gnu/Linux. I still use WinXP; I’m no longer the enthusiast that I used to be though. These days more than 50% of my computing time is spent using OpenSuSE (and I’m beginning to look at the Macs). These OSs shine when it comes to easy updates.
Posted in Windows | No Comments »
March 4, 2008 by pilot
Before I changed web hosting–twice!–a month ago, I wrote a few words about the pending resuscitation of
powertoolssoftware. This is a Yahoo! software enthusiasts group ostensibly numbering about 970 subscribers. Browsing their chart of message postings, it looks like the group started running out of steam after 2004; but maybe this is about to change.
Their forum is still down, however. Last time I wrote, there was some message traffic indicating that a rebuild was in the offing. Nothing yet. OTOH, several members are going ahead with an ambitious series of Windows-centric software reviews. I don’t know if that’ll revive interest, but they get my vote.
Posted in Windows | No Comments »
March 3, 2008 by pilot
It’s interesting to see how AOL is monetizing this player. Winamp v5.52 is available as proprietary freeware for Win98 through WinXP, or you can get the pro version for $19.95. Personally, I use the free version since I don’t burn many music CDs. Either way, you’re still going to see some ads, but that’s cool with me.
See, I use Amarok or Banshee in OpenSuSE for my music collection and they’re great; I use Winamp to access AOL Radio’s cool XM Satellite music streams. My Harman/Kardon speakers never sounded so good! XM is totally cool, ads or no ads. A broadband connection, of course, is essential for this Winamp feature.
Posted in Linux, Windows, freeware, shareware | No Comments »
March 2, 2008 by pilot
One of my online sources reported that Kingston was offering a time-limited, free-after-rebate deal on their 4 GB 133x Elite Pro flash memory several weeks ago. Compact flash is usually used for digital cameras, but nobody says that it has to be used that way.
For me, it makes a terrific backup medium for the WinXP partition on my dual boot rig using TeraByte’s excellent Image for Windows software. It takes about 44 minutes to store & validate my WinXP partition to compact flash which amounts to 20 minutes less than performing the same backup to DVD-RW.
Everybody knows that solid state devices are versatile so leverage some tightfisted technology for your PC backups. Watch the rebate sites for another cool deal on compact flash. Then, attach it to a USB 2.0 card reader (you can pick one up for a few bucks on eBay if your PC does not have one) and run your backup software. Remember to flush the cache before you disconnect your USB connection (I use
USB Disk Ejector donationware). That’s it!
Posted in Windows, donationware, shareware | No Comments »
March 2, 2008 by pilot
Consider my previous blog. Then, imagine how much money I spent on software that I no longer use. It’s not just about software, of course. In the late 1990’s, for example, I got MS Office 97, but I also got MOUS certified at the master level so I could use it. Multiply this case many times over to get the big picture (e.g., Visual Basic 6, etc., ka-ching!), but you’ve probably already been there yourself.
These days, I still use Microsoft operating systems (WinXP Pro & WinXP Home), but I also use OpenSuSE. In the interests of economy, I favor software that is ported to both OS’s: OpenOffice.org, Abiword, Gimp, Terabyte’s imaging shareware. This is simply good business.
My advice is to look at your bottom line. Industry pundits’ caveats about software migration & ROI’s usually don’t have your SOHO operation in mind.
Posted in Linux, freeware, open source, shareware | No Comments »
February 29, 2008 by pilot
I got nostalgic about my early years of 16 and 32-bit Windows computing today, even took a cusory inventory of the applications that I still use from the late 1990’s and they number exactly two: ClipMate v4.5 and TextPad.
ClipMate is the iron horse of Windows utilities. Is it possible that it is up to v7.3.05 now? I continue to use v4.5, however, since it does what I need. TextPad is equally good but marketed differently, I think. If I remember correctly, I got my registered version about the same time as I bought ClipMate, but I’m up to v5.1.0 of TextPad now (TextPad has not yet required an additional payment from me for their upgrades).
I depend upon my PCs for far more functionality now than when I bought this shareware, but I suspect that in another half dozen years I’ll still be using these two at least. I may even have to buy a ClipMate upgrade by then.
Posted in shareware | No Comments »
February 27, 2008 by pilot
alt.comp.freeware is still around, and probably worth your attention, as I hinted in my previous post. I say “probably” because Usenet is imploding: spam, sporge, trolls, ubiquitous flame wars, etc. OTOH, major freeware finds usually show up first at places like alt.comp.freeware on the internet.
I follow three simple rules for getting what I want out of Usenet:
- Become an adept at search.
- Never post.
- Let me paraphrase my old drill sergeant for a moment: If you ever think that you must post something, reread rule #2. If you don’t care about rules, then at least use a throwaway email address & dissemble everything except for the technical matter that interests you.
Posted in Windows, freeware | No Comments »
