Freebies that are worth having

[Slimey Flaps]

Just thought I'd add a freebie that I use on my computer that is excellent:-

Naviscope. Removes ad's, gives true download speed, adjusts your clock to the atomic one etc. I've even removed Web Washer cos' it does it's job as well as a host of others. No advertising either. Free from ZD net etc.

If you've got others, please add them....

[cossack]

Installed Naviscope yesterday. Too early to say if it has great benefits. I'm no computer wiz but it says it has blocked 91 ads, but ads still appear on pprune. What do I need to do to stop all ads?

[Captain Gidday]

My favourite would have to be "Photocopier" from www.nico2000.com (http://www.nico2000.com) . It just connects any PC's scanner to the printer to make the combination into an easy to use home photocopier. So handy to be able to run off a few A4 copies easily at home with just a mouse click instead of having to go down to the local printer\office supplier.
Slimey, I'm glad your program doesn't take out Pprune's advertising. Remember, if it weren't for the advertisers there would be no Pprune [or it would be a subscription service].
The free version of "Photocopier" downloads and displays fairly small ads from the internet, though it is quite easy to disable this function with a little ferreting around by deleting an installed file. Sorry, I'm not going to tell you which one. There is a pay-for-it version which has more features [just unnecessarily complicating things if you ask me] for $20 and no advertising, according to Nico Cuppen's website. Truly a 'must have', and I have no connection with Mr Cuppen or his website. Just a great little program.

[DreamCatcher]

Tried 'Photocopier' once when it came on a cover disk. Absolute crap, but that's my opinion.

If you have a reasonable scanner, why doesn't it scan/copy/print anyway? Mine is a several-years-old motorised PageScan Color Pro, and it does all that, but no drivers available for NT.

Cheers

------------------
PistonBroke

[Captain Gidday]

Well, that one went down so well [thanks for your thoughts, Dreamcatcher] here's another. I found one of the most boring parts of writing a website, even a modest one, is checking that all the links are correct. Xenu, a little freeware utility from http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html checks all your links [or anyone else's links, for that matter] in just a few moments. Like Photocopier it is a smallish download and is a stand alone program, so it can be easily deleted if you don't like it. Worth it's weight in pprunes.
And to answer your question DC, many low end scanners come with basic Textbridge or similar recognition software, a modest image editing package, but no easy to use one-click copying program. Try Papercom if you want a definition of clunky, for example. Also, Photocopier works with NT!

[DreamCatcher]

Fairy 'nuff, Skip.

I installed NT4 at home as part of a work project after doing the relevant MS courses.

Apart from having to locate specific NT drivers for graphics and sound cards, I couldn't get one for my scanner, so nearly went and bought another.

Anyway, the scanner is so effective, I dumped NT4 at home instead. Now on ME.

Cheers

------------------
PistonBroke

bloody typos again!

[This message has been edited by DreamCatcher (edited 28 October 2000).]

[CrashDive]

Imho two that are simply a must........

ZoneAlarm available at http://www.zonelabs.com

and......

NeoTrace - available at http://www.neotrace.com

The former checks that nobody is 'snooping' your machine, and the latter allows you to determine just where a server or IP address exists, who owns it, and via what routing your connection is being made to it.

[Captain Gidday]

Ah, Dreamie! Wisdom born out of experience. Stay at least two generations back in Computerland and life is so much easier. Those who insist on being at the cutting edge get, not surprisingly, cut.
And Crash is spot on as usual. Zonealarm is good [but "detects" some false intrusions occasionally] and Neotrace is very handy. [Motto: 'I used to think Pprune was in the UK...until I discovered Neotrace']

[CrashDive]

So our secrets out huh CG ?! ;)

[sprocket]

I have tried zonealarm twice, each time it sloooowwed my computer as I went online. It would take about 10 min to open a page. I have not figured out why.

Maybe somebody can help??

[Tartan Giant]

Cossack,

I too have installed NAVISCOPE....just wondering what settings you use under "Prefetch" (especialy 'phrases') - I'm thinking of PPruNe with a threads 15 pages long for instance.
Is "next" good enough, or do you need "page 2" etc etc.

[cossack]

TG
As I said in my earlier post, I'm no computer wiz, but I have "next" as the only word in the list and pages to prefetch at 15. I still don't really know if its of benefit or not. I guess the only way to find out, now that I've used it for a coule of weeks, would be to try surfing without it and see if there is a difference. So far it has blocked 1500+ ads.
If someone more knowledgeable about Naviscope wants to jump in here and help, I would appreciate it also.

[exeng]

Try this for free internet 'computer to telephone' calls. The address is http://www.go2call.com/

It does work but until you use a headset the person at the other end on thei phone gets annoying feedback.

This is only free in the U.K., to the U.S.A. and to various countries in Europe.


Regards
Exeng

[Mo Heekan]

Try AdFilter. Apparently it isn't as processor hungry as Webwasher & it does a great job.
http://www.adfilter.com/

Any body got any memory programmes that speed up the computer? Do they work?

Cheers :)

[R O Tiree]

Mo Heekan - What's your basic system spec? Processor, RAM, hard drive, video card, etc?

[Bon Giorno]

G'day Capt Gidday

I sometimes use Photocopier also, but please be aware that it "phones home" the next time you go online. Many freebies do this using some code from Aureate - rather naughty I feel.

The tools mentioned by CrashDive will confirm this.

I'm not sure what info it sends but I recall much Usenet discussion when it was first discovered - I think a search on "Aureate" would find it.

[John Boeman]

I find “Photocopier” great Capt Gidday. Thanks for the steer. I did wonder how it seemed to have a frequently changing ad banner. Now I know, after Bon Giornos post.

[Mo Heekan]

RO Tiree - Pentium 300. 128 mb Ram. 8 Gb hard drive. 8 Mb video card.

Bon Journo - Try 'Optout' to rid you of the Aureate menace. Its a great freebie.

[R O Tiree]

Mo - No easy way to say this - save up some pennies and get a new one!

[Mo Heekan]

RO Tiree,

Bugger. A decision I didn't want to hear. It's only 3 years old. What about a super fast graphics card, new chip etc?

[R O Tiree]

A super-fast graphics card ain't gonna help much. The bottleneck in your PC is likely to be the speed of the data bus on the motherboard. This is the speed at which the various components talk to each other. 3 years ago, the fastest bus you could get was about 75 MHz and most were only 66. Current motherboards communicate at twice that speed. Why is this a problem? Because your processor relies on the motherboard clock to set its own internal clock. If you are running a 500 MHz processor on a 100 MHz board, you set the jumpers (mostly these days this is set in BIOS) to 5X. Ie, 5 times 100 = 500.

If you get a 800 MHz processor, you will probably find that you cannot set the multiplication factor high enough to get the processor to run at full speed. Add to that the fact that even if you do get the processor running correctly, your data bus will slow memory access down. Since about half of a processor's functions are memory related, you aren't going to see much in the way of a performance increase. Finally, the connectors on most of the late-model chips have changed, so you probably wouldn't be able to get a fast processor to fit anyway.

Right, so now you've replaced your motherboard and processor, you will need to change your RAM. 3 years ago, RAM could just about keep pace with the highest bus speeds of 75 MHz. Motherboards running at 133 MHz are not uncommon, and your RAM just won't cope. It's not just a matter of it not running at full speed, it just won't work at all. Period.

Modern motherboards have AGP,these days as standard. (Advanced Graphics Port) This is a small, brown (usually) edge connector next to the PCI connectors. You can still get PCI Video Cards, but why ham-string your system?

You may also have an old style power supply. Does your computer switch itself off when you shut down, or do you have to press the power switch to do so? If your computer switches itself off, you might be OK. If not, you will probably need a new, "smart" power supply as there may not even be a compatible connector on the new motherboard for your old supply.

You may wish to replace the items mentioned above, and keep some of your old kit. You may not find that the saving is worthwhile.

Try here:
http://www.computerprices.co.uk

They get the lowest quote from 26 companies in the UK for any component you ask for. Price things up. See also my reply to pax anglia on http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/Forum35/HTML/000546.html

[Mo Heekan]

RO Tiree,

You certainly know your s@%t. Do you have time to fly? ;)

Thanks for the advice & for depressing me. Better start saving.....

[Eric]

Probably just me, but I've tried Netsonic twice over the past three years and both times I've had to reformat, so this is one that ain't worth having.
(The second time was the brand spanking new version so I thought it would be better http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/confused.gif )
The first time it's happenstance, the second time it's enemy action!

[Slasher]

Yeh I agree Eric. Netsonic is horsesh*t. Used it a couple of times before I dumped the useless bloodey thing from my disk.

Freebies that have a good track-record with me so far are:

Atom Time (adjusts PC clock to server clock)

Download Accelerator (with full Resume etc)

Gator

Housecall (on-line virus check)

Hypersnap-Dx (cut/crop/save screenshots)

Napster

Neotrace

Netscape 4.7 (NS6 is useless)

Optout

Realplayer

Realplayer Jukebox (Winamps better!)

Sam Spade

Winamp

Winzip

Zone Alarm

Can anyone recommend a good alternative to that silly Windows Media Player?

[This message has been edited by Slasher (edited 18 November 2000).]