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ClifNotesNewsletter041219
 December 19, 2004 |
Reviews
 602PC Suite
- MSOffice alternative |
Clif notes that this is a great free
alternative for MS Office tools. I really love the photo editor.
Open Office has more stuff, but these apps load faster and take
fewer resources.
Website -
(This suite is now Shareware) - Quote
from the website
602PC SUITE, the best alternative to MS OFFICE, has it all! The
suite is composed of four full-featured applications: a word
processor, spreadsheet, photo editor and photo organizer. The
license also allows home use,
FREE! |
 DELETE
DOCTOR - Delete Files that are hard to
delete |
Here's an easy way to get around that
"Access Denied" message windows gives you when it doesn't want you
to delete some file that's being used.
Website - Quote
from the website
Delete files that are difficult to
delete, such as some files left by viruses and trojans, or files
with corrupted file names. This program can also delete files like
the "index.dat" files, which store Internet history, by scheduling
them for deletion upon system restart. Select a file to delete from
the built-in file browser or drag a file to the application's icon
or window from Window's Explorer. |
 FrontPage Express - old freeware web page
editor |
Years ago, in the time of Windows 95, Microsoft
gave away a free version of their FrontPage web publishing software.
Now days, there are lots of free html editors out there and some are
free. Most of the currect editors are better than FPExpress but some
of us like to keep it around.
|
 IntregrityCheck System
Analysis - how safe are you? |
|
I thought this one sounded pretty good
and tried it out. It detected that I had the netbios port open and
not much else. That's because I've kept my system clean with a whole
slew of other Spyware and Trojan detectors. The netbios port didn't
concern me too much because nobody outside of my network can see it
past our router firewall anyway. Conclusion? Looks like good
freeware to me. Use it if you think a trojan may have gotten into
your system. You can't beat the price and it's very quick and easy
to use.
Spytech IntegrityCheck is a small, free, wizard utility for
quickly checking possible security weaknesses on your PC.
IntegrityCheck will quickly guide you through steps which will
determine all open ports on your PC that may be possible vulnerable
attack points for hackers and trojan software. IntegrityCheck will
also check for common backdoor trojans running in your process
memory.
Easy to use security wizard
Displays all open ports
which may be vulnerable attack points
Displays common trojans that may be running on your
system
Quick system security analysis
Retail Price: Free |
 Lucid - add
transparency effects to almost any window |
|
Last week I mentioned Transparent
Window Manager. That program went from Freeware to Shareware status.
Thanks to Iron_Point for telling me about it. He suggested this
program. He says "Its not bad. Most transparent applications use
a lot of memory this one seems to use less. Another advantage is
that its so simple to use. The help page consist of two pages. All you have to do
with this app. is drag an icon over the page and set the
transparency number."
Do you like those neat transparent (see through) windows that
were introduced with Windows 2000? Lucid will allow you to make
almost any window transparent, even the
taskbar. |
Open Office
- MS Office alternative |
Open Office Suite: I belive it's the
best of the free office suites.
Website - Quote from the
website
What's in the suite?
WRITER Is a powerful tool for creating
professional documents, reports, newsletters, and brochures. You can
easily integrate images and charts in documents, create everything
from business letters to complete books with professional layouts,
as well as create and publish Web content.
CALC is a
feature-packed spreadsheet which can turn boring numbers into
eye-catching information. Calculate, analyse, and visually
communicate your data quickly and easily. Use advanced spreadsheet
functions and decision-making tools to perform sophisticated data
analysis. Use built-in charting tools to generate impressive 2D and
3D charts.
IMPRESS is the fastest, most powerful way to
create effective multimedia presentations. Your presentations will
truly stand out with special effects, animation and high-impact
drawing tools.
DRAW will produce everything from simple
diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects.
The
Database User Tools give you all the tools you need for day to day
database work in a simple spreadsheet-like form. They support dBASE
databases for simple applications, or any ODBC or JDBC compliant
database for industrial strength database
work. |
RagTime Solo - Desktop Publishing
Software |
RagTime is a truely worthy opponent for MSWord
and Excel. It weighs in at only 49mb installed but packs quite a
punch. When I had MS office software loaded it lagged and
chugged. This program just zips. It does everything a DTP would
need done all inside one interface. Can import and export Word
97. Can export to html page.
Website
- Download
from Pricelessware - Quote from the website
Up to now, you haven't used layout programs, because you couldn't
afford to do without spreadsheet calculations or text processing.
Now you can give your work that final polish. With RagTime, you have
a single convenient layout environment in which you can process
text, tables, drawings, pictures and graphs. The intuitive user
interface simplifies your quick access to all of RagTime's
functions. |
TweakNow
RegCleaner - clean up your pc |
|
In the past, I've tried and used
several freeware registry cleaners with mostly good results. This
one seems to be a little different. After I run the scan it seems to
bring up a list of the ones it thinks could be problems. This is
good, but I'm used to seeing a lot more entries listed by the
others. I think this utility would be good to run after a scan from
your regular registry cleaner to make sure everything is looking
good.
... after installing and uninstalling a lot number of
applications, your Windows registry will contain a large number of
obsolete entries. This will significantly increase the registry size
and thus will slowdown your computer, because Windows will need more
time to load, search, and read data from registry.
To keep your computer in top performance, it is recommended to
periodically clean your Windows
registry. | |
Tips
 File
Sharing - what is it? is it safe? |
|
Shareaza????? p2p? is this a good
p2p guys??? i really want to know beacause!!! iam curious??
I wrote back:
Be careful out there. P2P file
sharing is a risky business. If you aren't careful you can download
spyware if you try getting free programs from others there. If you
just stick to data files (mp3, jpg, avi, mov, and others) you should
be fairly safe. I don't recommend any of the file sharing services..
I go to only safe places to get stuff. For example if you want MP3's
go to http://music.download.com
.
Here is another take on file sharing
from the PC Mechanic Newsletter. The author, Justin
Shin seems to think it's ok to use file sharing services.
He does offer some warnings and also some reviews of the best media
players to use.
I'm still not convinced ...
Website - Quote from PC Mechanic Newsletter #65
File sharing is a phrase of dubious meaning. To some, it
represents the theft of copyrighted materials and works; to others,
a means of freedom in the modern world. Depending on which side of
the fence you stand, file sharing has a ubiquitously accepted
association - "Napster." However, there is more to file sharing than
simply downloading music from online sources. The old "Napster"
service, which featured the ability to search for music through a
centralized server and download it from peers, was deemed in
violation of the law. However, since the fall of "Napster," many
alternatives have sprung up to take its
place. |
 How do
Internet search engines work? |
Have you ever wondered how search
engines find web sites so quickly? Professor Javed Mostafa, at
Indiana University, Bloomington, explains it in this article.
Website - Quote
from the website
It has been estimated that the amount of textual information
accessible via search engines is at least 40 times larger than the
digitized content of all the books in the Library of Congress, the
world's largest library. It is a challenge to provide access to such
a large volume of information, yet current search engines do
remarkably well in sifting through the content and identifying
related links to queries. |
Linux Live CD
List - try Linux without an install |
I've tried one or two of these CD's in
the past. It's amazing to me that you can burn a CD that has an
entire operating system on it and it runs shortly after you boot up.
Website - Quote
from Infopackets Gazette
Comprehensive, easy-to-search list of approximately 200 Linux-based
Live CDs. These are CDs you can burn, and then boot and run Linux
from them, even though you have Windows as your main
OS. |
Privileges Risk &
Logon - do not surf as administrator in Windows
XP |
OneStep is a member at the Computer Help
Club. He wrote to us to tell us how dangerous it is to use an
administrative account to surf the web and read email. I'm sure some
of you have no idea what the differences are between an admin
or limited user account. If that's true, then see this
article. Here are instructions for creating
accounts.
Quote from OneStep: Most home users create a user account
which has administrative privileges. This is a dangerous
practice especially when surfing as any malware seeking to install
inherits the user's privileges. If you're logged in with admin
rights the malware gets unfettered rights to your critical system
files/settings too. Thus, it is better to use a Power user or
Limited user account for every day use and only use the inbuilt
admin account for maintenance and installing/uninstalling stuff.
Microsoft has released a little utility that makes it safer for
those of you who don't want to listen to advice and want to surf and
email with full administrative privileges. It's called "Drop My
Rights".
Quote from Microsoft: What if someone does want to browse
the Web? Or read e-mail? Or do Instant Messaging and so on, and for
some reason must run in an administrative context? If you look at
the major threats to computers, they are from user interaction with
the Web through tools like browsers and e-mail clients.
|
 TrackEngine -
keeping up to date on your favorite sites |
Once again, the CyberGuide leads us to
an unexpected treasure trove.
Quote from CyberGuide's Xanga blog
How many times do you get
frustrated that your favourite website does not get updated often
and when it does you're too late to find out about it?
Quote from the site:
TrackEngine can make sure you never
miss any updates on a web page. Too busy to read your favorite
online news for the next few days because of work commitments? No
problem! TrackEngine will email you the page with the updates
highlighted so that you can read them at leisure later.
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Cool Websites
BootDisk.com - more than just disk
help |
|
Great bootdisk downloads, tons of free
advice and tutorials. Very informative newsletter. May not be a good
site for the inexperienced users.
Welcome to Bootdisk.Com
The majority of tips, tweaks, files, bootdisks, instructions,
utilities, links, patches, updates, and all other information
contained on this site are posted for experienced DOS and Windows
users.
Thanks for visiting and remember: Don't fix a system that's not
broken :) |
Google Library - 5
university libraries indexed by Google |
Right now I can get on my pc to
search 20 or 30 libraries and check out books to read. My local
library gets the books and gives me a call to come and pick them
up. Google is taking this another step and bringing the library
to me! This is an example of the true potential that the internet
has. Knowledge is power ...
Website
- Quote from Aunty Spam's Netpatrol
Google has just announced exclusive
deals with five libraries, including the New York Public Library,
and university libraries at Harvard, Stanford, the University of
Michigan, and Oxford, to scan some or all of their collections and
incorporate the results into the Google search engine
database. |
Google Suggest - the
search engine with the gift of gab |
Here's another reason to love Google.
They will help you search by recommend things as you are typing in
your requests. Thanks to V.
Subhash for the tip.
Try it
out - Learn
more about it - Quote from the website
What is Google Suggest?
As you type into the search box, Google
Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real
time. This is similar to Google's "Did you mean?" feature that
offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except
that it works in real time. For example, if you type "bass," Google
Suggest might offer a list of refinements that include "bass
fishing" or "bass guitar." Similarly, if you type in only part of a
word, like "progr," Google Suggest might offer you refinements like
"programming," "programming languages," "progesterone," or
"progressive." You can choose one by scrolling up or down the list
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ClifNotesNewsletter041219
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