Carputers News and Computer Tips

Lee Mathews writes at Download Squad: 

Now, it’s not my intent that anyone actually follow this horrible, horrible advice. It’s just that so many people seem to think this type of behavior is perfectly normal computer use. 

So here it is: my 5-point method for turning your computer into a quivering pile of malware-infested, hacker-friendly trash. 

Though this is written tongue-in-cheek, it is good advice! 

Unfortunately, as is the case with most good advice, it is indeed a pity that the people who would benefit most from it also are the least likely to read and heed it…

The Gizmodo blog today featured a great post entitled A Complete Guide to Watching Your Favorite Shows (Legally) Without Paying a Dime.

“You can spend up to $100 a month for various cable and satellite services to watch the new season of programming that began this week. Or, if you’ve got an internet connection and are willing to be a little more creative than buying episodes for $2 off Amazon Unbox or iTunes, you can view most of it for free.”  

Free is good! 

Edit 09/25/2008: 

Lifehacker put a call out to their readers on 09/24/2008 asking for the best sites for streaming TV.  Be sure to read through the reader comments for suggested sites.

Edit 09/28/2008:

Here are the results from the Lifehacker survey mentioned above.  Again, be sure to read through the reader comments… 

Edit 10/03/2008:

Lifehacker has also blogged about a free streaming TV program called Livestation. 

Edit 10/08/2008:

Lifehack Magazine (not to be confused with Lifehacker) recently posted 15 Ways to Watch TV Online Free. 

A few weeks ago, Clif from the FreewareWiki wrote a fine post about the Lupo PenSuite.  We’ve been fans of this collection of portable applications for some time.  

Clif mentioned in his post that he found it difficult to create his own menu entries in the Lupo menu system.  We added SoftMaker Office 2006 to our copy of the suite, and took the opportunity in doing so to create a tutorial slideshow (which we’ve embedded below) on how to add a portable application to the Lupo PenSuite.

 A full-screen version of this presentation is available here for those that are interested.  

IrfanView is a free image viewer and editor that we’ve used (and really enjoyed) since the Windows 95 days.  It is quick, light and easy to use.  This YouTube clip is a good basic tutorial on how to get started with IrfanView:

Samuel Dean has written a couple of great posts about IrfanView on the Web Worker Daily blog called IrfanView: Great Graphics On-the-Fly, and Free, and Tutorials and Plug-Ins for IrfanView–a Graphics Gem.

Ben Carigtan has written an outstanding tutorial called Photo sketch tutorial and swapping colors using IrfanView for the Online Tech Tips blog.

A Google search for IrfanView Tutorial will give you many more guides and tutorials to choose from. 

This is a free office suite which will run on Windows 95 and newer Microsoft operating systems.  It consists of:

TextMaker for Windows - The Microsoft Word-compatible word processor that’s so easy to use that you’ll wonder why you bothered with Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org for so long.

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PlanMaker for Windows - The Microsoft Excel-compatible spreadsheet that opens all your Excel workbooks directly and gives you many time-saving features.

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There is no presentation (PowerPoint-like) component.  Nonetheless, we are really liking this suite for its versatility and simplicity.  It is more capable than AbiWord and much lighter and quicker to open than OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, or Lotus Symphony.

It also has another neat feature - after installation, a start menu link is created which allows the suite to be copied to a USB flash drive as a portable application.  You CAN take it with you!

Details and a download link can be found here.  The suite is fully-functional, non-crippled, and not time-limited.

After installation, click on Extras, Preferences…

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…and then click on the File tab at the top of the Preferences window.  The second drop-down menu (as shown below) allows the default file format to be set to your choice of Microsoft Office-compatible formats.  You’ll need to do this in both TextMaker and PlanMaker.

TextMaker documents will then be saved with a .doc extension, and PlanMaker spreadsheets will be saved with a .xls extension automatically by default so they can be shared with Microsoft Office users.  

PC World reporter Christopher Null tried to buy a computer with Windows XP preinstalled on it from the United States’ nine biggest PC makers. His findings: You can get one, but be prepared to fib.

The biggest issue with “downgrading”, in our opinion?  Before trying (on your own) to replace a factory install of Vista with a retail copy of Windows XP, make sure that there are Windows XP drivers available for all of the hardware in your machine.  The first place to look would be the computer manufacturer’s website.  If you don’t find everything you need there, you could run a program like SIW to positively identify all of your hardware.  Once you have identified the hardware you can try to get drivers from the hardware manufacturer(s)… 

Here’s a classic example of why - an article that makes for an interesting read.

What happened when ‘Penelope Retch’ answered her spam e-mail… What would be the experience in 10 countries when everyday people, armed with a PC and e-mail account McAfee provided for the Global S.P.A.M. Diaries project, clicked through the spam and chronicled the results?

We’ve found the best anti-spam measure (besides being very careful about giving out your email address) is a free GMail account from Google.  You can use it to check and filter almost any other email account you may have, and their spam filter is the most effective we’ve ever seen or used.

If you want to try this, but need help setting it up, contact us!  We’d be happy to help!

The Investintech website (this company sells PDF conversion software) recently posted a good article about free MS Word alternatives - including web-based applications.   

Those of you that are running the free (and pay) versions of AVG 7.5 are probably getting messages about upgrading to version 8.0.  Virus definition updates and support for the free version of AVG 7.5 will end as of 05/31/2008. There is a free version of AVG 8.0, but it is not easy to find, and the update messages steer free users towards the pay version.

The free version of AVG 8.0 is available from this web page. Use the second link down, which will pull the file directly from AVG’s servers.

It is strongly recommended that, when installing AVG 8.0 Free, a custom (rather than default) install is selected.  We would suggest NOT installing the “Web Shield” nor the “AVG Security Toolbar”.  Users have reported better performance without having these options installed.  

As always, if you need assistance or have questions about securing and protecting your computer or network, contact us!  We’d be happy to be of assistance! 

Samer (creator of the most excellent Freewaregenius blog) did a recent comparison of many of the free applications that can be used to convert .pdf files into editable MS Word .doc files.  His verdict?  Online service Koolwire did the best job overall.