The two best (and free) spy-ware removal programs I use are the Yahoo Toolbar (IE plugin) or Lavasoft’s Adaware SE for Opera or Firefox users.
Both work well and which one you use is mostly a matter of preference.
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7-Zip is the only compression / decompression program you need for a Windows computer and it’s free.
That wasn’t clear enough? 7-Zip handles all the archive formats you’ll encounter on the net. It also integrates nicely into your right-click menu allowing you to “Extract Here” on any compressed file.
There is a lot of software “available” on the internet in the form of ISO images. Although these copies of the discs can easily be burned onto a CDR disc, I wanted a way to use the ISO images without first having to burn them.
DAEMON Tools is a virtual cd/dvd-rom emulator. It is able to emulate nearly all known copy protections on the market today. After installation and a restart, Daemon tools allowed me to mount an image and have it show up as a drive.
If you have the extra hard drive space, this seems like a really good way to play computer games without having to switch discs. Check their Games Database to see if you favorite game’s copy protection is supported.
WARNING: I tried this at home and my computer almost died. The forums have many comments about problems with this software, especially when installed next to Easy CD Creator. If you have XP, set a system restore point first.
Radmin is an award-winning multifunction remote control program. Radmin enables you to remotely monitor or work on one or more network computers right from your own workstation. It is a complete remote control solution with such features as File Transfer, NT security, Telnet and Multilanguage Support built-in.
If you don’t have Windows XP Professional, Radmin is better than VNC to control a remote PC. It only works with Windows PCs, but the increased speed and encryption is nice.
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One of the most common uses of winMd5Sum is to make sure that a file that you have downloaded is not corrupt. Some websites post the MD5 Check Sum of a file on their download page. Once you have downloaded the file, use winMd5Sum to get the MD5 Check Sum of the file on your computer. Then make sure that the MD5 Check Sum from the web site is the same. If they are the same, then your file is exactly the same as the file on the website.
Get winMd5Sum free.
Chicken and the egg question: How do you check the MD5 sum on this download without installing it?
I’ve been talking with our Network Operations guy at work about securing a home system. One of his recommendations about my network is that I still use FTP to upload files. FTP authentication information (i.e. passwords) are transmitted over the network unencrypted, which makes FTP an inherently insecure protocol. He suggested using SCP, and closing down port 21.
SCP, Secure CoPy, is a free program with a great user interface. It is customizable between an Explorer like window, and a “Norton Commander” interface with your local files are in the first column and remote files in the second. It allows for drag and drop movement of files, and even movement of files remotely, if that option is selected. Most importantly, it supports a secure transfer of passwords and files that will be the standard for getting files onto my server.
Get SCP or something like it, because ftp access is closing.
Having started work on Hooride.com the need for a good, free file transfer protocol (FTP) client arose and I settled on WS FTP. It’s free (for students and government workers) and it works infinitely better that the built-in FTP that MS Explorer uses.
If you are new to using FTP, you can take a look at this guide.
Enjoy
My spelling is really bad (My Grammer isn’t that much better). I think I lost all confidence in the first grade when I had a serious mental block about how to spell the word ‘field’. I’ve managed to get by pretty well, often pulling up Microsoft Word or google if I had a tough word to spell…but I recently found something better.
isSpell is a free IE browser extension that spell checks everything I enter into a form. Pretty handy when you have your own blog site or frequently contribute. Simply install the program, and the “Check Spelling” option appears in your right click menu for easy use.
Editor’s Note: If you haven’t switched from Internet Explorer to Mozilla’s Firefox by now, get with it.
At my current client site, we are ‘required’ to have at least two of the following messengers open on the computer we are working on: Yahoo!, MSN Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) or ICQ… Having all those open at once got a little ugly on my poor little laptop, so I looked for a solution.
I found Trillian and tried it out for a week before making this recommendation: It works and works well! This program will consolidate all the above messengers plus a few I’ve never heard of into one easy-to-use interface, which produces none of the annoying banners or pop-ups that the other messengers do. There are no ads or spyware included. I love it and want to share it - try it out.
Instant messaging rules!
