This helpful article directs users to two helpful websites for identifying free software and determining if it is what you need.
The two websites are: http://www.osalt.com/ and http://www.ohloh.net/.
osalt.com helps you identify a particular piece of software for a given purpose. ohlot.net helps you determine how well that software meets that purpose.
Del.icio.us Social Bookmarking is a great way to find information that other internet users find helpful.
The basic idea is to use “tags” to label each link saved to your Del.icio.us folder. One can then see other links with similar tags. Each link can have multiple tags. By using tags, one does not need to keep a huge list of hierarchical bookmarks/favorites, but rely on the tags to find helpful sites. The biggest benefit is access to one’s Del.icio.us bookmarks from any computer on the internet.
It is easy to see what other Del.icio.us users find important on a day-to-day basis, and one can often find new web sites that if you knew it existed, you would have already tagged it.
By submitting your own favorite websites, you help shape the views of all the other Del.icio.us users. This is truly a melting pot of ideas.
In addition to my favorite software, here are the tools I use to help others with their Windows computer problems.
For Anti-Virus, I use a combination of Trend Micro’s Sysclean, Grisoft AVG, and ClamWin. I also use McAfee’s Stinger for quick scans for the most common issues.
For SpyWare, I use a combination of SpyBot Search and Destroy and WinPatrol.
For Optimizing, I use CCleaner, NTRegOpt, and PageDefrag, and JKDefrag..
For Backups, I use SyncBak.
For computers that have so much spyware/viruses that they do not start, I use a Linux Boot CD. This allows me to get the data copied to a USB stick, so that I can wipe the drive and start fresh.
Where the user is open to it, I move them to Linux.
If Linux is not an option, I try to get them to use FireFox and Thunderbird, and educate them about how to avoid viruses and spyware. I also point out all of the free and open source software that is available.
Due to financial difficulties, it appears that the end is near for Pegasus Mail.
While Pegasus has some great features, and is free, it is limited to Windows. This also raises the question of whether or not Pegasus users will be able to easily convert to other email programs. While most email programs can probably handle importing from Pegasus, there are also utilities to aid one in moving from Pegasus to other mail formats.
There are two good utilities, while Windows based, run well in Wine, or in various virtual machines on different operating systems. Both are developed by Fookes Software, Aid4Mail and Mailbag Assistant.
Both are able to convert from one email format to almost any other desired format. Aid4Mail can save messages to MHT format, for ease of viewing in a web browser. Mailbag Assistant is an email archiving and search utility. One can reply to or forward an email in any email box, using one’s current email program.
There is much more to both programs, that will help those with lots of email, from any program move to other formats. Both preserve the original mail files, so the conversion, is really a new set of files. These utilities make it very easy to investigate different email clients if one wants to experiment. Both are fast and can handle very large numbers of email messages.
Microsoft has released Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 7 to the public.
Unless you are comfortble with potential problems, it is recommended that you NOT install IE 7. IE 7 is already known to cause problems with some anti-virus programs, and to not work with some online banking, and web mail applications. A mahore security issue was also announced today.
IE 7 is limited to users with Windows XP or newer, so the majority of Windows users will not be able to use it.
For a simpler, and smaller browser, try Firefox or Opera. Both are standards-compliant and fast, and have tabbed browsing, and are free.
If you want to know what software is available on Linux that meets the needs of your software on Windows, then check out The Table of Equivalents/Replacements/Analogs.
I have my own list of software that works on Windows and Linux on my Favorite Software Page.
If you do a little research, you will find that almost all Linux programs have been ported to Windows and many other Operating Systems, and they look and function the same way with only minor differences. Firefox, Thunderbird, and Open Office are three very well-known examples of this. One way to prepare for future explorations into Linux, is to use the Windows versions of software to get your job done. Almost all are free, and work just as well as the Microsoft equivalents, and often better, and usually more secure.
Thunderbird has an option to allow the welcome screen to be changed to a web page of the user’s choice. It can even be a web page stored locally on the hard drive. My Firefox home page is a file on my hard drive. I have links to sites I visit often, such as the sites I administer, or links to my webmail accounts.
On Windows use these steps to change the Thunderbird welcome screen:
click on Tools -> Options
On Linux:
click on Edit -> Preferences
The box labeled Location should contain something like: chrome://messenger/locale/start.html if it has not been changed previously. Click the button labeled Restore Default to undo any custom settings.
Click the TOOLS Menu.
Click Options.
Click Host Communications
Click Data Ports.
The desired port or re-set to default may be specified.
Go to the EDIT Menu.
Click Preferences.
Click Updates – uncheck “Display Notification At Startup”
Click Startup – uncheck “Display Splash Screen”
This will stop annoying windows asking to download products that are not needed. It will also speed up the start time for Adobe Reader.
There are several tweaks you can make to Internet Explorer that will make it more FTP-friendly. First, you can set up IE so that it can browse FTP directories, just as if they were folders in Windows Explorer:
1. Click Tools | Internet Options.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Under Browsing, check the box labeled Enable Folder View For FTP Sites.
Next, if you’re on a computer that’s behind a firewall, you’ll need to set up IE to use passive FTP:
1. Click Tools | Internet Options.
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Under Browsing, check the box labeled Use Passive FTP.
To download a file from FTP use this URL:
ftp://whatever.com/
This will result in the user being prompted for a password. Once the user supplies the password, a directory comes up, and the user can drag and drop files to and from the FTP window. Contact your support representative for this password.
A good free FTP client is FileZilla at http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla.