I teach a technology course at a community college near where I live. This week one of my students managed to delete all of her work for the period. Now normally I would have just done a search of the system and LAN resources to see if I could find her stuff. But, being a college, environment, there are a lot of things that have been disabled, "Search" among them.
So I logged onto a download site and downloaded FreeCommander. I then installed it on the computer in question and went looking for useful files. We found two.
When I was doing end-user support, I resorted to Norton Commander pretty much every day. When Windows came along, I made do with File Manager, but I kept Norton loaded just in case. Now Windows offers next to nothing in the way of meaningful file management, and Norton is no longer in the game.
Enter Free Commander.
This program is what Norton would have done if he'd not sold out to Symantec. Free Commander offers a side-by-side listing of disk contents, in the view of your choice. An optional divider bar can facilitate copying, moving and a host of other manipulations.
I would be hard to document all of the useful tricks this well designed and well written program can do. Maybe I should just say that I use it every day and would be quite lost without it.
You can find it at http://www.freecommander.com
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Giveaway of the Day
I subscribe to an interesting software service. "Giveaway of the Day" rolls out a sample of software every day for a limited time. The range of products is broad, from screen savers to CD burners to application suites. There's no rhyme or reason to the selections, but most are good for a laugh if nothing else.
The majority of offerings are of limited appeal and on occasion the software is trial-ware or worse. But sometimes the programs are gems. I particularly like Tweak RAM and Buku Mahjong.
You can leave comments on the current offering, and it might be a good idea if some intelligent people got involved. For the most part, the comments are inane.
You can get hooked up at http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/
The majority of offerings are of limited appeal and on occasion the software is trial-ware or worse. But sometimes the programs are gems. I particularly like Tweak RAM and Buku Mahjong.
You can leave comments on the current offering, and it might be a good idea if some intelligent people got involved. For the most part, the comments are inane.
You can get hooked up at http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Network Magic
Funny story…
I’m sitting on the phone waiting for my ISP tech support to find a solution for my internet being down. It went down on Thursday. I was assured that it would be back up by Saturday. We happened to go away for a few days, but when we got back home on Wednesday the following week, no internet!
I’d been on the phone with tech support for nearly an hour and had done most of the things the tech asked me to do. I passed on a few of the suggestions. Having been a technical support supervisor, I have a pretty good idea of what is wasted effort (at least he didn’t tell me to reformat my drive). So I’m bored, frustrated, thoroughly disillusioned, and am barely grunting at the tech’s suggestions.
So I start browsing some of the files I’ve downloaded lately. I spotted Network Magic, which I’d downloaded a week early but had never looked at it. I ran the install routine while the tech was looking around for a “level 2” to hand my problem to. I ran Network Magic. It rebooted my network card. It flushed my cache. It did a number of other things and then informed me that my internet connection had been repaired. My browser, which had been a blank screen for all the time I was on the phone, showed my home page! Elapsed time, about a minute and a half. I thanked the tech and hung up. I then ran out and bought a copy of Network Magic (it was being offered with an embarrassingly cushy discount).
A Network Magic license is good for three(!) machines. So I installed the new copy on my laptop. It immediately configured all that needed to be configured and quietly informed me that I could connect to the internet through my wireless router. I then installed it on my desktop machine. The status screen showed that both my printers were now available to the network. I confirmed this at my laptop. Then there was the prompt offering to share folders between computers. Guess what … it works.
This is the type of program that I like to see, but at the same time it makes me wonder about a lot of the crap being offered today. This program just plain works. It provides features beyond my expectations, and it’s so darn easy to use. And there’s no question as to what each of the screens is for.
If you’ve been having trouble with your network or internet connection, or if you just want to share printers and folders between computers, something Windows promised it would do (“Just follow the on-screen prompts” -- yeah, right), then shell out the ridiculously low figure of $29.95 and install Network Magic ASAP.
Oh, did I mention there's a free version?
http://www.networkmagic.com/
I’m sitting on the phone waiting for my ISP tech support to find a solution for my internet being down. It went down on Thursday. I was assured that it would be back up by Saturday. We happened to go away for a few days, but when we got back home on Wednesday the following week, no internet!
I’d been on the phone with tech support for nearly an hour and had done most of the things the tech asked me to do. I passed on a few of the suggestions. Having been a technical support supervisor, I have a pretty good idea of what is wasted effort (at least he didn’t tell me to reformat my drive). So I’m bored, frustrated, thoroughly disillusioned, and am barely grunting at the tech’s suggestions.
So I start browsing some of the files I’ve downloaded lately. I spotted Network Magic, which I’d downloaded a week early but had never looked at it. I ran the install routine while the tech was looking around for a “level 2” to hand my problem to. I ran Network Magic. It rebooted my network card. It flushed my cache. It did a number of other things and then informed me that my internet connection had been repaired. My browser, which had been a blank screen for all the time I was on the phone, showed my home page! Elapsed time, about a minute and a half. I thanked the tech and hung up. I then ran out and bought a copy of Network Magic (it was being offered with an embarrassingly cushy discount).
A Network Magic license is good for three(!) machines. So I installed the new copy on my laptop. It immediately configured all that needed to be configured and quietly informed me that I could connect to the internet through my wireless router. I then installed it on my desktop machine. The status screen showed that both my printers were now available to the network. I confirmed this at my laptop. Then there was the prompt offering to share folders between computers. Guess what … it works.
This is the type of program that I like to see, but at the same time it makes me wonder about a lot of the crap being offered today. This program just plain works. It provides features beyond my expectations, and it’s so darn easy to use. And there’s no question as to what each of the screens is for.
If you’ve been having trouble with your network or internet connection, or if you just want to share printers and folders between computers, something Windows promised it would do (“Just follow the on-screen prompts” -- yeah, right), then shell out the ridiculously low figure of $29.95 and install Network Magic ASAP.
Oh, did I mention there's a free version?
http://www.networkmagic.com/
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