These I always install (PC Utilities in General)

Member Name: grahamt

Product:	PC Utilities in General
Date:	14/11/08 (129 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: These will keep you up and running ; all free

Disadvantages: Support may not be as good as with commercial products

Recently one of the Dooyoo members read a review I wrote some seven or more years ago, in the Software tips and advice category. It was a review of all of the essential utilities upon which I had come to rely. I must admit I'd forgotten all about it so I went back and re-read it. My, how things change over the years! Despite the fact that at the time I earned a Crown for it, some of the subjects of the review I no longer use and some may not even exist any more.

So, I thought I'd do an update but as Dooyoo hasn't implemented a suggestion I made that the reviews should be ordered by the date they were last changed and as it isn't possible to write two reviews in the same category, I've posted this one here instead. It seems as good a place as any!

My thoughts on what I really needed to install were brought very much into focus because recently my laptop started playing up. It all started to go to pieces when I tried to upgrade WindowsXP to Service Pack 3 (SP3). The upgrade failed in mid install and from that point onwards the machine just went more and more weird. Microsoft were baffled (no surprises there then) and suggested a different method of install that was arcane in the extreme. It didn't work. Eventually the manufacturer, Acer, suggested sending the machine back to them for repair and that seemed to resolve the problem.

However, now I needed to reinstall WindowsXP (I'm still not going to go to Vista until I'm forced, even though my Acer TravelMate will support it!) and bring it right up-to-date, before reinstalling all my essential software. First of all I decided to write down all the software that was at that time installed. There was a lot of it! Inevitably I found stuff I'd not used for ages so the question was going to be, what could I leave out and what should I keep.


Data Protection
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You probably never really appreciate the value of the information on you computer until something happens to it. Then, the very first thing you probably say (that's printable anyway) is, "If only I had...". Well, here's a few of the things I do to try to prevent ever having to utter those depressing words.

Security
~~~~~~~~
My laptop sits on a home network and behind a broadband router. As you will have gathered from recent comments, I don't use wireless networking. All the machines in our house are connected by good old reliable network cables and network switches. The broadband router acts as a firewall, hiding the home network from the outside World. Unsolicited access to the home network is blocked by the router. Nevertheless, I still use security on my laptop as well, even though it rarely leaves home.

Firewall
~~~~~~~~
In addition to the router I also switch on the Microsoft Firewall that comes with WindowsXP. It may not be the best but it's good enough, especially as it really only needs to protect me from other machines on our home network and I think I'm fairly safe there. I have noticed a problem with the Microsoft Firewall though. During the boot-up process I get a message from the Microsoft Security Center saying that my machine is unprotected because no firewall can be found! Hello!!!!! It's your firewall!

This only seems to have happened since I installed .Net Framework 3.0. Why that should be the case I have no idea. I haven't bothered contacting Microsoft about this problem as the firewall does get turned on eventually. I have plans in this area for the future anyway.

Antivirus
~~~~~~~~~
I have used the free Avast! Antivirus Home Edition for a considerable number of years now, since I ditched AVG. I like it and it seems to do a very good job. I have written a separate review of this product so I won't add any more here about it. However, once again this may change in future if I decide to change direction on the whole security subject. Avast! states that its antivirus solution also has anti-rootkit and anti-spyware capabilities but I like to be doubly sure.

Anti-Rootkit
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I use the Panda Anti-Rootkit application. It isn't real-time but it does have boot time capability, meaning that it gets into the system before anything else that could try to block its action. I run it about once a week.

Anti-Spyware
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are so many products on the market but of them all I have chosen to install Spyware Blaster. I like the way that it operates although with the free version there is no automatic update. I get around this problem by launching it automatically at boot up time and then clicking on the Updates check to see if there are any new signatures to download.

Encryption
~~~~~~~~~~~~
We all have our secrets. I keep mine secured with TrueCrypt. I've yet to find anything more effective or cheaper (it's free!) and easy to use. I have written a separate review of this very useful application.

The future
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I mentioned that I have new plans for securing my laptop in future. This will not be for free though. The solution I am planning to use is a physical device. It's called the Yoggie Pico Gatekeeper. It's a stand-alone computer that slots into either a free USB slot as a USB data stick look-alike or into the Express Card slot. It runs the Linux operating system and is independent of the main machine and, because of its design, cannot be infected by any viruses or spyware. As all of the security functions run on a completely separate processor, the main machine should also run a lot faster. Watch this space.

Data Backup
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Of course, just preventing anyone getting their hands on your data is one thing. Sometimes you lose data simply because things go wrong. On our home network we have a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device and it this device that also provides the first port of call for the data on the various computers we use, the data on which we want to secure.

Some time ago I wrote about a utility called Allways Synch, that I used to use to synchronise the data between the folders on my computer and the duplicate copies on the NAS. However, I have become more and more disenchanted with it, especially its monitoring of my usage and the nags when it thinks I'm using it for more than "reasonable usage".

So, now I've found something even better. It's from a German software company (ASCOMP) and it's called Synchredible! If anything it's even easier to use than Allways Synch and it's definitely more flexible. You can schedule it to kick off at various frequencies or on different events so you can just leave it there in the background to do its own thing and make sure all you data changes are protected. Not quite "real-time" data protection but close enough.

However, it is a "Free for Personal Use" version of a commercial product so support may not be available if anything goes wrong, as is common with these sorts of applications. I did try the Forum but it told me it wasn't accepting any more membership applications!!!

Compression Utilities
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I put this here deliberately because in my case I need a utility that not only compresses data but encrypts it and makes it self-extracting as well. Whilst TrueCrypt provides me with everything I need for real-time, secure data management, I also need to be able to securely archive the data to another location for protection against accidental loss or destruction.

There are any number of Zip type tools and I've tried most of them over time. I thought I'd found the perfect solution in TUGzip but it has problems running on the screen resolution that I use - 1680x1050. Some windows are unusable because the contents disappear outside of the window frame. The developer promised a resolution but it still hasn't appeared yet.

So, I now use 7-Zip instead. It's another SourceForge freeware project and uses its own compression algorithm (7z) but supports other formats as well, such as ZIP and TAR and will unpack a whole bunch of others. Best of all, most of its actions can be invoked from the right-click context menu.


Network Monitoring
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have you ever wondered what's going on on your broadband connection? You've clicked something on the screen but nothing sees to be happening. Is data being downloaded or are you just being a bit paranoid? I like a nice graphical display that will tell me if I'm just waiting for data to be downloaded or if I need to look for a problem.

What I use is Codebox's BitMeter II. Bitmeter places a little graphical display on the screen that shows you not only what data is flowing on your broadband connection but, if you are on a network, say a home network, what data is flowing between your machine and others on the network.

The icon in the System Tray also gives you access to a whole bunch of statistics as well, so you can keep track of your usage should your ISP be one of those implementing a "Fair Usage" policy. I've written a full review of this very useful application.


Screen Management
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To be honest the days of a need for a screen saver are long gone. They were originally introduced back in the days of CRT monitors and Windows graphics which stayed on the screen in the same place for a long time. This caused shadows of the graphics to be burned into the screen so you could see them even after the monitor was turned off.

These days I use the standard Windows My Pictures Slideshow with photos taken on a recent holiday. There are still times though, when you want to switch off the automatic launch and for this I still use today the same brilliant, simple little utility I used at the time of the original review - Ricardo Thompson's Screen Saver Control. This little System Tray gizmo lets you switch off the screen saver with a single click or launch it with a double click. What more could you want?

By the same token, there are times when there is an application that you want to remain on the screen even if your immediate focus of attention is something else. Not all applications have a "Stay on top" setting so, how do you get them to Stay On Top? I use Don Neufeld's NailIt. Like Screen Saver Control, it was written back in the mists of time and like SSC, it still does what it says on the tin.

Installation is nothing more simple than extracting the executable from the zip file and parking it in a suitable folder. I put my copy in a folder in Program Files on the C: drive. I then put a shortcut to it in the Quick Launch part of the taskbar. When you need it you just double-click it and it launches itself to the System Tray. Right click the icon and select "Nail" then click the Title Bar of the window of the application that you want to stay on top. It's as simple as that.


Media Player
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've tried loads of media players over the years. Originally I relied entirely on Windows Media Player but although it has got more and more feature rich as new versions have been introduced, the quality of what it plays, especially videos, seems to have got worse.

I also used to use Real Player and this was the one that I listed in the original review. However, whilst the quality has improved it has also wormed its way more and more into your system, installing all sorts of additional unwanted components. I have been told that it also monitors your usage without you knowing. I don't know if this is true but I could believe it.

So, now I use what I consider the best player around, GOM Player. It seems to take everything in its stride and the quality it produces is excellent. Out of the box it doesn't support Real format media but by simply installing the Real Alternative codecs it will even handle those as well.


Music Extractor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Of course, you need to have something to play with your media player and I always extract the tracks on the CDs that I buy to MP3 format on our network attached storage device so that it can be played on any computer on the home network.

At the time of the original review I was using Jose Porral's CdnGo,and very good it was but recent releases have gone "semi-pro" without any real improvements to the application. I have no objections with developers seeking to get something back for their efforts. However, when there are so many alternatives out there that are free and just as good, I don't really see the point.

Consequently I now use MGShareware's FreeRIP instead. It's every bit as good. For the MP3 encoding it uses the popular LAME encoder (yet another SourceForge project) and FreeRIP combines with it very well, to make a complete package. I like the way that it pops up a window whilst the encoding is taking place, showing you exactly what is going on. I sometimes want to do stand-alone MP3 encoding and for this, rather than use LAME as a command line application, I use the graphic front-end, Holger Dors' RazorLame, with it.

Of course, there are times when you have to start from scratch, from a raw audio stream. In my case this is from the hundreds of vinyl LPs I have in my collection. Gradually I am recording them to digital format. Some albums have never been released on CD and may never be although I'm surprised to find some I had never expected to be re-released have now been.

However, we cannot wait for ever and so I need an application to handle the conversion. For this I have yet to find anything better than Audacity, yes, you've guessed it, yet another... Originally I was using Cool Edit 96 but that morphed into a chargeable product Cool Edit 2000 from Syntrillium Software. Syntrillium was bought by Adobe and it now exists as Adobe Audition.

Audacity can extract to WAV format and will encode to a whole range of different standards. It also provides powerful editing facilities. In addition to WAV, the digital format can also be extracted to MP3.


Image Manipulation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No change here. Then I was using Irfan Skiljan's IrfanView; I still am. This superb application just gets better and better.

I used to use a separate application, Capture, to improve the flexibility of screen capturing. You might wonder why I would need a separate application for screen capture when it can simply be done by hitting the Print Screen (PrtSc) key to copy the current screen to the Clipboard. Capture allows you to define what is captured and sits in the System Tray awaiting your command.

However, IrfanView provides a capability that is good enough and in the interest of reducing the amount of software installed I am now relying upon it alone. It captures the screen and opens IrfanView with the screen image displayed, ready for editing. That's what I need.

When I need to edit images beyond this, then I use Paint.NET. This is like the standard Windows Paint but on steroids. Paint.NET is improving all the time. Photoshop, be scared, be very scared.


File Transfer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A change here as well. Laplink FTP has gone and in its place I now use Filezilla. Laplink FTP is still available but is no longer in active development. It hasn't been updated since 2000 but then again, maybe Laplink believes it doesn't need to be?

Filezilla, once again, is a SourceForge project and does exactly what it says on the tin. There is plenty of competition out there in the graphical FTP world and some developers even charge for their solutions. I can't imagine why you would want to pay for something which does the job and is free!


PDF Tools
~~~~~~~~~~~
I wonder how much money Adobe had made out of PDF over the years? I wish I had 0.001% of it. I'd be a very rich man. OK, the Adobe Reader is free but if you want to do anything with a PDF you have to pay, and pay.

But, maybe not! Our new HP All-in-one printer enables documents to be scanned to PDF format, which is useful but for a very specific requirement I also needed the scanned image as a JPEG. I could have scanned it a second time in JPEG format but what I found is the PDFill PDF Tools. This is a general set of utilities that enable you to generally transform PDF files, either to or from other formats. As a part of the application you also get a printer driver utility that enables you to "print" a file to PDF format if the application doesn't do it natively, like OpenOffice does.

It is similar to the perhaps better know PrimoPDF, which does pretty much the same thing. However, I find PDFill more flexible and user-friendly.


Application Uninstaller
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You might wonder why there might be a need for something like this when most applications come with their own uninstallers. Do you know just what a c**p job most uninstallers do? Almost all of them leave bits and pieces lying around. I sometimes wonder if they do it deliberately just to screw up your machine for daring to remove there software!

Revo Uninstaller comes to the rescue. It tracks everything that gets installed and makes sure that everything is removed. It first runs the "official" uninstaller and then goes around cleaning up behind it. Essential!


Summary
~~~~~~~~~
Of course this isn't the only software I always install but the rest, such as OpenOffice, Mozilla Firebird, Mozilla Thunderbird, Nokia PC Suite and so on really falls outside of the description of a utility. Indeed, some of those I have listed above, such as some of the security stuff, could probably be considered more than just a utility. I may well install other stuff in the future as well.

Software comes and goes. Developers lose interest and a good piece of software stagnates. Then you have to find something new. Who knows if I will still be using all of this in another seven years' time. Watch this space.

Summary: A selection of the basic essential utilities for your computer

Variety of features:
Reliability:
User friendly:
Installation:
Update possibilites: