Auto Updating Software

A lot of software these days automatically updates itself by downloading and installing updates. Whereas this can be convenient and helpful, I've learned it can also be a bad thing.

I think I dislike auto-updating software because of bad experiences in the past. I don't have a problem when the update is a fix to a problem. But often times software developers use this auto-updating mechanism to new or unwanted software. Microsoft's Windows Update has been guilty of this, I suddenly find software on my system that I didn't want. This is frustrating for someone who likes to maintain control over their computer.

Adobe is another gross violator. Adobe products like Reader and Flash are constantly updating and reinstalling crappy Adobe software like Adobe Air. It's to the point where I won't install anything Adobe on my system.

This problem is not isolated to computers either. The other day my Internet-enabled TV automatically downloaded and installed a new firmware update. After the install the volume was greatly increased, about 3 times it's previous level. I think Vizio realized they screwed up because the next day it downloaded another update, now the volume is only about twice as loud as before.

Again, my complaint isn't with making fixes available. It's with the unilateral way in which these fixes are applied. Please, offer us the consumer a way to select the updates, update manually, or even opt out completely. Put the control in our hands.

Chrome is #2 browser

This week various tech news sites reported that Google's Chrome is now the second most used browser, behind Microsoft's IE and overtaking Mozilla's Firefox. For me this is kind of bittersweet. Don't get me wrong, I like Chrome and I despise IE. But I personally feel like Firefox is a better browser. I feel that Firefox has:

1. A better UI. I've never been a fan of skinned applications.
   
2. A larger better selection of extensions/add-ons.
   
3. More control to customize the browser just the way you want.
   

On top of all this, I would say that Firefox is just as fast and uses memory just as efficiently as Chrome.

Again, don't get me wrong. I'm pleased to see IE use is declining! I have never liked IE, any browser is better than IE. I just hope Firefox continues to gain in popularity just as fast as Chrome.

My ultimate free software list

Lately I've been on this big kick about finding the best free software on the Internet, and I've been pleasantly surprised. I found a lot of great programs out there that are totally free. Below is my grand list of what I've found up 'til now, for each item I tried to put a short description. There are too many in the list for me to put longer descriptions. I've broken the list down into software category types.

Multimedia

1. Audacity - Powerful and useful audio editor that supports all the major audio formats.
   
2. Avidemux - A good video editor. Does everything VirtualDub does and then some.
   
3. CamStudio - Capture your desktop as a video. Great for recording product demos, youtube how-to videos, etc.
   
4. FLAC - The audio encoding tools for FLAC, the free lossless audio codec.
   
5. Gimp - An extremely powerful image editor (think Photoshop). The only downside is it has a steep learning curve.
   
6. Greenfish Icon Editor Pro - Editor for Windows icon files. Not as powerful as Gimp, but smaller and has some nice features.
   
7. HuluDesktop - Watch all the content of Hulu on your computer but without requiring a web browser.
   
8. IrfanView - Powerful and yet simple image viewer program that includes some lightweight image editing tools.
   
9. Lame - Audio encoding tools for MP3 audio files.
   
10. Media Player Classic Home Cinema - A very good video and audio player. Has very simple UI and controls, like a program should.
    
11. OGG - The audio encoding tools for the OGG audio format.
    
12. VLC - Another simple video and audio player. Not as good as MPC-HC in my opinion, but has some unique features such as the ability to play internet streams.
    
13. VirtualDub - A simple video editor. Can't do complex tasks, but can do simple tasks like rotate, adjust colors, adds subtitles, etc.
    
14. WaveStudio - A free audio editor similar to Audacity, although not as good.
    
15. Winamp - Audio player for pretty much any audio format.
    

Disc Utilities

1. CDCopy - Utility for ripping audio CDs to WAV files for encoding to MP3, OGG, and/or FLAC.
   
2. DISCInfo - Simple utility that displays info about your optical drives such as types of discs read/written, speeds, and firmware versions.
   
3. DVD Decrypter - Allows you to backup/copy DVDs.
   
4. DVD Shrink - Create copies of DVDs, remove unwanted material to save space.
   
5. ImgBurn - Great utility for burning CDs. Burns either files to the CD, or burn from an ISO image.
   
6. oscdimg.exe - Command line tool from Microsoft for creating ISO images. No download link for just this program, you'll find the file inside the Windows Automated Installation Kit download (1 GB in size).
   
7. WinCDEmu - Mounts ISO files as virtual drives. I prefer version 3.4 which offers a "portable" version of the program.
   

Compression

1. 7Zip - Awesome encryption that can be twice as much as the venerable PKZip.
   
2. PKZip - Good old PKZip, where would the world be without you!?!
   
3. Rar - Another good compression tool.
   

Security

1. KeePass - Centrally store and manage all your passwords in one secure file.
   
2. Microsoft Security Essentials - My favorite free anti-virus program.
   
3. TrueCrypt - Create encrypted containers to store files, encrypt USB thumb drives, even encrypt entire disk partitions.
   
4. Spybot - Scan for all the other types of malicious software that virus scanners don't check for.
   

Communications

1. DNSBenchmark - Test the speed of your DNS servers against public DNS servers to find the best DNS servers for you to use.
   
2. Google Chrome - Second best browser in my opinion. Has very good adherence to web standards.
   
3. Firefox - Everyone should be using Firefox, the best browser as far as I'm concerned. Don't forget to add the plugins AdBlock Plus and Flashblock.
   
4. FileZilla Server - FTP server for your computer.
   
5. LeechFTP - A very good FTP client.
   
6. Putty - A telnet and secure shell program.
   
7. Thunderbird - The best email client, from the makers of Firefox.
   
8. TightVNC - TightVNC is a remote desktop program. The built-in program with Windows is better, but if you can't use that for some reason try TightVNC. Other good options include RealVNC and TigerVNC.
   
9. WinSCP - FTP and secure FTP client.
   

File Utilities

1. Locate32 - Find files on your machine faster than Windows ever could.
   
2. NTFSDelete - Recover previously deleted files. I personally prefer the look and feel of version 0.93 of this program.
   
3. WinMerge - View the differences between two files and folders graphically.
   

System Information and Utilities

1. AquaKeyTest - Program to test keyboards, helps you determine how many simultaneous keystrokes your keyboard can detect.
   
2. CCleaner - Clean your system so it runs faster. Has an option to run as a portable application.
   
3. CPU-Z - Shows you everything about your CPU, motherboard, chipset, and RAM.
   
4. Defraggler - Defrag your hard drive. I think one is better than what comes with Windows. Has an option to run as a portable application.
   
5. GPU-Z - Similar to CPU-Z but focuses on your graphics card.
   
6. HWMonitor - Real-time display of all the hardware sensors inside your computer such as temperature, fan speed, and voltage.
   
7. PCITree - View info about all the PCI devices in your computer.
   
8. RegShot - Take snapshots of your computers registry and difference them to show you exactly what changed.
   
9. SharpKeys - This program is used to map keys on the keyboard to other values.
   

Tool Suites

1. AnalogX - Lots of good utilities here.
   
2. Freezerware - Utilities written by yours truly.
   
3. NirSoft - Tons of programs and all very useful. Most are available in 64-bit as well. Most, if not all, are portable.
   
4. SysInternals - Now owned by Microsoft. Easily the best suite of tools on the Internet. Every Windows power user/developer needs these tools.
   

Games

1. DoomLegacy - Play the original Doom and Doom 2 using new enhanced graphics such as lighting effects. Requires the original Doom WAD files.
   
2. FCEUX - Emulator for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
   
3. Kega Fusion - Emulator for the Sega Master System, Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Gear, 32X, and Sega CD.
   
4. MAME - Emulator for arcade machines.
   
5. NagaSkaki - A really good chess program.
   
6. Snes9x - Emulator for the Super Nintendo (SNES).
   
7. Streets of Rage Remix v5 - An AWESOME fan remake of the Streets of Rage series on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Download no longer available, but if you search the web you can find it.
   

Applications

1. Adobe Flash - I personally hate Flash, but you can't get by without it these days.
   
2. Adobe Reader - Not the best PDF reader in my opinion, but it is from the original creators of the PDF format which carries some weight.
   
3. Adobe Shockwave - Again, I hate Shockwave, but you kind of need it.
   
4. Hallo Northern Sky - Free planetarium software. Great for locating planets and constellations in the sky.
   
5. LibreOffice - Free office software like Microsoft Office, only without all the bloat. LibreOffice is a branch of the more commonly known OpenOffice.
   
6. Microsoft Mathematics - Free math software. Think of it as a graphing calculator on your computer - it even looks like a graphing calculator.
   
7. Microsoft Office Viewers - If you just want to view Microsoft Office files not create them, then you need to download these Office Viewers.
   
8. SumatraPDF - Small, simple PDF viewer. Way better than Adobe Reader. Includes a plug-in for browsers like Firefox.
   
9. Sunbird - Calendar and organizer from the makers of Firefox.
   

Editors

1. HxD - Very powerful hex editor. Edit files and disk sectors in hexadecimal.
   
2. Notepad++ - Very powerful text editor. Blows the doors off of Notepad included with Windows, and pretty much every other text editor out there.
   

Development

1. Application Verifier - Force bugs in code to cause exceptions which makes them much easier to find and fix.
   
2. Interactive Disassembler (IDA) - Disassemble binary files, great for reverse-engineering.
   
3. Microsoft Orca - Tool for creating and editing Windows Installer files (MSI). Included in the Windows SDK download.
   
4. Microsoft Visual Studio Express - Free versions of the Microsoft flagship compilers. Has some features removed.
   
5. VerySleepy - Profile applications to improve speed. Not as good as the Profiler including with Visual Studio, but that version requires the highest level of Visual Studio which many developers don't have.
   
6. WinDbg - Very powerful and useful debugger. Included along with the Debugging Tools for Windows in the Windows SDK.
   
7. Wireshark - The best packet sniffer available, period.
   
8. WMIExplorer - Browse the WMI namespace on your computer.
   

Databases

1. Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition - Free version of Microsoft's SQL server with a 4GB size limit.
   
2. Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express - GUI editor for Microsoft SQL databases. This is a great companion to the free SQL Server Express.
   

Virtual Machines

1. Virtual PC 2007 - Really good VM program, my personal favorite. Has good integration with the OS, both the host and client OS.
   
2. VirtualBox - A VM program from Oracle. Has some cool features like USB pass-through. I believe it's also available for Linux.
   
3. VMWare Player - VM program from VMWare, the biggest player in this market segment. Has lots of bells and whistles.
   

Operating Systems

1. Ubuntu - Best version of Linux for the average person. Surprisingly user-friendly and easy to setup. If you want/need an operating system and you don't want Windows, this is your best choice.
   
2. Windows PE - Yes, a free version of Windows. But not too useful for most people. Best used as a bootable CD to run diagnostics, backup, etc. Included in the Windows Automated Installation Kit download.
   

Bootable Utilities

1. DiskCopy - Copy, clone, backup, and restore disk partitions.
   
2. Memtest86 - Test your system memory for problems.
   
3. Partition Wizard Home Edition - Move, resize, create, delete, etc. disk partitions.
   

DNS benchmarking

If you know how the Internet works, then you know how vital DNS servers are. Basically they convert human-readable names like "www.google.com" into addresses like "74.125.47.104." Loading an average webpage results in multiple DNS queries. So a slow DNS server means slower page loads, fast DNS equals faster Internet.

I just discovered two completely free DNS benchmarking utilities. They both do the same job and both do it will, so I'll mention them both here and let you decide which to run (or do as I did and run both). Both programs require a list of DNS servers to test, and both of them get this list from the same locations. 1) A built-in list of public DNS servers, 2) your computer's configured DNS servers (most likely assigned automatically to you by your ISP via DHCP), and 3) allow you to manually input additional DNS servers.

DNS Benchmark by GRC
GRC has made a lot of great free utilities over the years, and this one is no exception. I think everything this guy does is 100% hand-written assembly which is impressive. This also means the programs are small, fast, and simple (all good qualities).

Namebench by Goolge
Namebench is a program that came out of Google's "20% project." All developers at Google can use 20% of their time to work on personal projects. This is one of those projects. Namebench runs more tests than DNSBench which can be good, but it also takes longer.

Both of these are great programs and if you know what DNS servers are and how they work, I encourage you to give them a try. If you don't know what a DNS server is then don't bother, you're more likely to mess up your Internet connection then improve your speed.

Down with IE!!!

I've long hated Internet Explorer. I won't really go into the technical details of why, just to say that Internet Explorer is the worst browser and anyone still using it (regardless of the version) needs to switch now. Well the good news is, people are doing just that! IE has been in a steady decline for several years while Firefox has been on the rise and Google's Chrome is on a rapid climb. It's now official, for the first time in over a decade IE accounts for less than half of the browsing done on the Internet. If you look at just desktop computers or if you add in tablets and smart phones, IE is in a downward spiral.

Anyone who's a fan of IE could point out that IE is still the single largest browser in use with almost the same amount of use as Firefox and Chrome combine. My answer to that is to look more closely at the numbers. The best figure I can find is over 91% of all desktop computers run Microsoft Windows, with the remaining 9% running another operating system such as MacOS or Linux. So what this means is over 91% of the computers on the Internet come with IE preinstalled, and yet IEs share has dropped to less than half, which means a lot of people are bothering with the trouble to download and install a better browser (i.e. Firefox and/or Chrome).

So if you haven't already downloaded Firefox and/or Chrome, you need to do so. Let's see how low we can get IEs market share.

What is handbrake?

At home I've been considering building a Home Theater PC (HTPC). During my research I've seen a lot of talk about a program called Handbrake and other related programs such as DVD rippers, DVD encoding, DVD burning, DVD playback, etc. I had a hard time understanding all this initially, but I think I've finally got my head around all this. I wanted to share it with others in the hopes that it helps.

I want to start at the opposite end from Handbrake, with the DVD player software. Two of my favorite media players are Media Player Classic Home Cinema and VLC. There are tons of other players out there, but these programs are two of the best. They are small, fast, and (most importantly to me) they have a clean simple interface. They are also powerful and they play every format I've thrown at them.

Ok, if you insert a DVD into your computer, start MPC or VLC, and select "play disc" it will begin playing the DVD. You can also use MPC / VLC and browse to the DVD drive where you'll see tons of VOB files. If you select one of these VOB files it will begin playing that video. DVDs store the video as a series of VOB files on the disc. So far everything is as expected.

Now let's say you want to watch the DVD without the disc. Why would you want to do that you ask? One good example is my laptop at home does not have an optical drive of any type. So I cannot watch a DVD on my laptop. So let's use Windows Explorer and copy all the files on the DVD onto a hard drive. If we use MPC / VLC to open the folder it will begin playing the movie, but the movie is all scrambled and unwatchable. If you open a single VOB file from the hard drive, again the video plays but it is scrambled. What happened? It plays from the disc but not from the identical copy made on the hard drive. The answer is copy protection. The disc is encoded in such a way that it only works if you play from the original source.

It turns out there is a way around this problem. You need to run software that enables you to copy the disc. I've found tons of programs that do this; DVD43, DVDShrink, DVDDecrypter, and DVDFab are four free programs I've found. If you use one of these programs to copy the disc to your hard drive, you can now open the files using MPC / VLC and it will play correctly.

Some of these programs appear to do more than just enable file copying. For example, DVDShrink allows you to remove menus, title screens, subtitles, foreign language audio tracks, etc. to reduce the size of the files.

I realize I haven't mentioned anything about Handbrake, which is the thing that started this thread. Why are so many people talking about Handbrake, especially since I just showed you how to copy DVDs and handbrake wasn't involved? It turns out Handbrake is a converter. Basically it converts the VOB files into an MP4 file. The main reason someone would want to do this is because not all devices have a VOB player. Apply iPod, iPhone, iPad, Microsoft XBox 360, etc. are all devices that don't play VOB files but they do play MP4 files. So Handbrake converts the video so that you can watch it on your iPad, XBox 360, etc. I should point out, converting the video will result in a loss of quality, so if you're planning on watching on your PC don't use Handbrake unless you need to compress the video to reduce its size.

Useful utility - HardwareMonitor

It has been a while since I posted a new "useful utility" but I recently found another great program called HardwareMonitor. It's from the same great people who brought you CPU-Z. What's great about this program is the system information it shows you. Most computers have sensors in them; sensors to detect temperature, voltages, fan speeds, etc. Whereas these sensors can track useful information, the problem is there is no easy way to see the output from these sensors. That's where HardwareMonitor comes into play.

HardwareMonitor finds all the sensors in your system and then displays their output in real-time. I was shocked to see how many sensors are in my computer. For example, my CPU has a thermal sensor per core. My video card has both a thermal sensor and a voltage sensor. My motherboard has tons of voltage sensors, fan speed sensors, and additional thermal sensors. Heck, even my hard drive has two thermal sensors on it.

This information is very useful if you're trying to track down a hardware problem. Beyond that it's just cool information to see. Enjoy!

Compression Software

Everyone's heard of Zip (or more accurately PKZip). It's become the ubiquitous compression standard. But it's far from the only one, and as it turns out not necessarily the best one either. Recently I was curious how PKZip compares to some of the other newer compression algorithms out there. So I tested it against RAR and 7Zip.

Before I get into the results I wanted to talk about how I tested. I created 5 data sets, and then used each of the three programs to compress the data. I looked at the resulting file size to determine which compressed more. I also timed the compression since speed is another important factor.

Binary Files

For my first test I took 289MB of binary files, i.e. EXEs and DLLs. These files typically compress well.

PKZip: 124MB and 39 seconds.

RAR: 105MB and 55 seconds.

7Zip: 85MB and 92 seconds.

Text Files

For this test I used 26MB of text files. Again, these typically compress very well.

PKZip: 6MB and 2 seconds.

RAR: 5MB and 4 seconds.

7Zip: 3MB and 10 seconds.

MP3 Files

I took a large folder of MP3 files. MP3 files are already compressed and typically do not compress well.

PKZip: 284MB and 33 seconds.

RAR: 283MB and 91 seconds.

7Zip: 283MB and 84 seconds.

JPG Files

As with MP3 files, I took a directory of JPG files. Also as with MP3 files, JPGs are compressed and typically don't compress well.

PKZip: 10MB and 1 second.

RAR: 10MB and 2 seconds.

7Zip: 10MB and 2 seconds.

Miscellaneous Files

For the last test I took a large directory tree of miscellaneous files (54MB in size). This should provide a good overall sample.

PKZip: 14MB and 5 seconds.

RAR: 14MB and 6 seconds.

7Zip: 8MB and 12 seconds.

Conclusions

In every test PKZip was the fastest. Also, in every test except the JPG test 7Zip had the highest compression. And in almost every test RAR was right in the middle for both speed and compression amounts. So which is the best compression tool to use? That's hard to say. PKZip is nice and quick, and it's become extremely common. 7Zip has very impressive compression levels, and it's totally free. RAR is hard to pin down. On the one hand you could say it did not shine and any one category. But on the other hand you could say it was a middle ground, the best of the two of them.

For me personally, I'm probably going to trade off between PKZip and 7Zip. I may start to use 7Zip more now that I've seen how impressive it's compression levels really are. But it will be hard to stop using PKZip altogether since it's so prevalent.

VirtualPC and Ubuntu

As I discussed last time, I have settled on Virtual PC as my virtual machine emulator. But again that's not to say Virtual PC is without its share of problems. While installing Ubuntu I've run into a minor little problem... the fact that you can't install Ubuntu because the virtual machine keeps crashing.

After researching this I've found the problem and a solution. But I feel like I'm caught in the middle of a battle between two giants. The crux of the problem is Virtual PC does not support 24-bit color, only 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit. This is no doubt because Windows uses 8, 16, and 32-bit color depths. But Ubuntu is Linux which apparently uses 24-bit as the high instead of 32-bit. Because Ubuntu is trying to use a color depth not supported by Virtual PC it results in a crash inside the virtual machine. But I said I feel like I'm caught between two titans. I feel like Microsoft should fix this, they should add 24-bit color support (after all VirtualBox supports it). But I also found an interesting blog post from a Microsoft developer on the VPC team. In it he said Microsoft's virtual video card reports that it does not support 24-bit color. This means there is a bug in Ubuntu, it's not correctly detecting the lack of 24-bit support. So which giant is going to fix the problem first, Microsoft or Ubuntu? And in the mean time I'm stuck in the middle.

Even with the bug, I have found a way to work around the issue. First, when installing Ubuntu you need to disable hardware-assisted virtualization support. This will allow you to install Ubuntu without a crash. Once installed you can change the UI settings to use 16-bit color instead of 24-bit. And the final gotcha is GRUB, the Linux boot loader. The new version of GRUB uses a graphical mode which, surprise surprise, is in 24-bit color. In Ubuntu add a package to your system called "StartupManager" This program allows you to set the color depth used by GRUB. After you make all these changes you can reenable hardware-assisted virtualization support.

Using virtual machines can be a huge time saver, but at the same time when you run into issues like these virtualization can be nothing but a headache.

Virtual machines

I think I was slower than most people to use "virtual" machines, I've only just started within the last few months. I think my main problem was the fact that I had so many machines in my office. At one point I had something like 15 physical machines in my office. With that many physical machines, you don't need virtual.

Since I am "discovering" virtual machines for the first time, I wanted to try many of the more common virtual machine programs to see which is the best. I decided to test Microsoft Virtual PC, Oracle VirtualBox, and VMWare Player - all free emulators. Here's my mini-review of the three.

Virtual PC - Virtual PC wasn't the fastest, and it does have issues. For example, installing Linux requires special steps because Virtual PC doesn't support 24-bit color. Also, it doesn't support 64-bit OSes. All that said, it was my favorite of the three. What I really liked about Virtual PC is the clean UI. There is something to be said for a clean simple UI. I also liked that Virtual PC doesn't install a virtual network adapter as the other two programs do. Virtual PC feels the least invasive of the three.

VirtualBox - VirtualBox was by far the slowest, but it also had some powerful features. Unlike VPC it allows you to expose more than 1 CPU to the emulated PC. It also supports a 64-bit environment. My biggest gripe with VirtualBox is the UI has a very "Unix" feel to it. There's nothing wrong with Unix-looking UIs, except when I'm on Windows I want all the UIs to look like Windows.

VMWare Player - Player was the fastest of the three. It also had some impressive features. I did find the UI difficult to navigate at first, it lacks the flow the other two have. It also has a "skinned" UI which in my opinion is a detraction. Why does every company these days feel the need to "skin" their apps? What's wrong with a consistent look and feel. When every program looks and functions differently it has the effect of reducing productivity.

All and all these three programs were pretty good, I could live with any of the three. But ultimately I chose Virtual PC based largely on it's clean easy to navigate UI.

Useful utilities - GIMP

Today's useful utility is the GNU Image Manipulation Program (or GIMP for short), which is a free image-editing utility. Gimp is on par with Adobe Photoshop, except Gimp is free. But I will warn you, Gimp is not for the faint of heart. Image editing is a very complex task, it's not like opening an image in paint. You need to become comfortable with layer, masks, etc. So Gimp, just like Photoshop, has a steep learning curve. But once you learn how to use Gimp you can do some very powerful things.

Here's a quick and dirty example of what you can do with Gimp. Here's a random picture I found on the Internet. As you can see it's all washed out, the picture was over exposed. The second image is after I edited it with Gimp.





You can see the image is much better. The background is still washed out, but the subject in the foreground is not. My editing of this image was very quick, I'm sure if you took more time editing you could clean it up even more.

In addition to image editing, Gimp can be used to create images from scratch. Here is an image I recently created as an icon/logo for a program.



If you've been looking for a powerful image editor, I strongly encourage you to download Gimp and be patient during the learning process. If you're just looking for a program to remove red-eye from your photos, you probably want to look elsewhere as I think Gimp will overwhelm you.

Gimp is available for just about every platform, Windows, Mac, Linux, 32-bit, 64-bit, etc.

Firefox extensions

If you're reading this using Firefox then I have a few browser extensions I want to make you aware of. If you're reading this using Chrome, Safari, or Opera... well these extensions won't help you. And if you're reading this using IE then you need to stop using it and go with a superior browser. [Totally random, but recent web statistics show IE's market share is at an 11 year low.] Here are two add-ons for Firefox which I consider indispensable.

Adblock Plus - Firefox has a built-in pop-up blocked, but this takes it one step further. Ads that are embedded in the page that do not pop-up, this add-on blocks those too. And this add-on does an incredible job. I rarely see an ad of any type when browsing with Firefox. No ads and no pop-ups, this is the way the Internet was meant to be.

Flashblock - I've grown to hate flash. I think it goes back years ago (and still today), I hate when you visit a site and all of a sudden video and/or audio starts playing on your system and you can't stop it. Or you're trying to read a page of text (like on cnn.com) and there's some animation on the side which is very distracting. My hatred of flash is so deep that for as long as flash has existed I refused to install it. I would never install flash, in fact I would go so far as to disable it on systems which came with it preinstalled. Well that's all about to change. This really cool add-on only plays flash content if you approve it. When you view a page with flash content all the flash items appear as play buttons. They only run if you click the play button. So by default no flash item plays, only if you run it does it work. I like to think of this as the best of both worlds, I get to see flash content but on my terms not the web page designer's terms.

UltraEdit

Today I wanted to talk about another useful utility - UltraEdit. However, I'm not going to put this one under the standard "useful utilities" header that all the others have gone into. The reason being is UltraEdit unlike all the other utilities is not free. This one costs money, but to me this program is totally worth it.

UltraEdit is probably the best most powerful text editor you can find. I wouldn't even describe it as Notepad on steroids because that way underestimates what UltraEdit does. It has a built in hex editor - I love the ability to perform hex search and replaces. It colorizes code and web files to make them easier to edit. It edits files of any size, I've worked on 4GB files before. Just tons of features. They are up to version 16 and the last version I licensed was 5, so I'm sure there are tons of new features I'm not aware of.

I discovered UltraEdit in college around 1997. A friend of mine had a copy of it and I was very impressed with it. I think I originally pirated a copy of it from him and used that (my ethics as a poor college student weren't the best). After about a year or so I felt guilty because this was a very good program and I used it a lot. So I decided to become a legal owner and purchased a license. This continues to be one of the most used programs on my system.

They have a demo you can download and try for free. Give it a try, you might find it so useful you want to spend the $60.

Useful Utilities - Virtual CD programs

A while back I needed a good virtual CD program. I ended up downloading at least a dozen virtual CD programs and tried them out. Most of them were junk, but there were some good ones in there. Here are my two favorites:

ISODisk -ISODisk is the epitome of a simple program. Very clean UI, the ability to mount multiple ISO images, and even rips discs to ISOs. However, despite all this I did not end up using ISODisk for my needs at home because ISODisk lacks one significant feature - x64 support.

WinCDEmu - WinCDEmu is the virtual CD program I ended up using. Whereas the program is not as simple and as clean as ISODisk, it does support x64. Another feature I really like about WinCDEmu is the source code is freely available. In the future I'm hoping to modify WinCDEmu and give it a clean UI. But in the meantime WinCDEmu is a pretty good program.

There you have it, if you're looking for a virtual CD program you might want to give one of these a try.

Useful Utilities - System Information

Today I'd like to talk about 3 small utilities which provide you useful information about your system.

CPUZ - CPUZ is an excellent little program that gives you tons of information about your CPU, RAM, and motherboard. It identifies your CPU including manufacturing technology, cache sizes, cores, voltages, etc. It also provides info about your motherboard including northbridge and southbridge chipset info. And lastly it identifies your RAM, how much, how many slots, what size stick in each slot, etc.

GPUZ - GPUZ is not written by the same people as CPUZ, but clearly by the name they are going for name recognition. GPUZ does a great job of identifying your graphics processor. It can tell you the manufacturing technology, number of shaders, DirectX support level, memory size, clock rates, etc.

DiscInfo - DiscInfo is a simple little program that displays info about optical drives. It will show you a huge list of what the hardware supports, so you can see what types of discs the drive can burn. It also shows you the drive firmware so you can see if there is a newer firmware available from the manufacture. Below is a screenshot of the hardware capabilities of my DVD drive.



Download these 3 programs, they are all small simple programs but they provide very useful information.

Useful Utilities - IrfanView

Picture viewing/editing programs are a dime a dozen. But most of them seem to fall into one of two categories. Either they are very simple programs with limited capabilities like Windows Image Viewer or Microsoft Paint, or the image viewer is incredibly complex and powerful like Photoshop or Gimp. Sometimes you need simple and sometimes you need complex. But often times you want something right in the middle. Enter IrfanView.

IrfanView is the image viewer/editor that I use the most. It's fast and simple yet has some very powerful features. It handles pretty much every image format, I've never found an image this program won't open. It has batch processing capabilities, slideshow, fullscreen viewing, as well as a good number of effects and editing that can be done to the image. For me this is the perfect program to replace the horrible Windows Image Viewer. Give it a try, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Useful Utility - WMIExplorer

If you've never heard of WMI then today's useful utility will probably not benefit you. It's called WMIExplorer and it allows you to easily browse the entire WMI namespace. WMI or Windows Management Instrumentation is a way of accessing a lof of information about a computer. You can access hardware information, software information, even real-time events as things happen. If you poke your head around WMI you might be surprised all that's in there. The problem is, you can't poke your head around WMI. You can write a program to easily enumerate any one area, but there are hundreds of areas. That's where WMIExplorer comes in handy. This program allows you to easily browse the entire WMI landscape and see what you can find.

If you're writing a program and you're going to access WMI for some piece of data, a tool like WMIExplorer is invaluable.

Useful Utilities - Wireshark

Today's useful utility is Wireshark, a free and very powerful network packet sniffer. It was probably about 5 years ago I needed a packet sniffer to analyze some network traffic at work. So I searched the Internet and downloaded about 10 packet sniffers. Some of these were totally free but many of them were limited trails of a full product. But most of these programs were difficult to use and/or didn't work very well. Only two programs caught my eye as worth using. One was Packet Monitor from AnalogX (previously discussed) and the other was Etherreal. Etherreal was by far the more powerful and capable program, Packet Monitor's main benefit was a very clean UI. Etherreal has since changed its name to Wireshark.

Wireshark has sort of become the defacto standard for packet sniffers. In the last two years multiple customers with issues have sent me packet traces of their issue, and these traces have always been from Wireshark. So if you've never used Wireshark you might want to download it now and play with it a little bit, you never know when you're going to be given a Wireshark file or asked to capture some activity using Wireshark.

Useful Utilities - Freezerware

Today's useful utilities seems a little self-serving. That's because it's utilities written by me. Over the years I've written tons of little programs for my own use. After the number reached several dozen it dawned on me that others might find these programs useful as well, so I created a web page and provide them for download. Initially all the programs were command line tools, but eventually I added some GUI programs.

If you're wondering about the name "Freezerware." It's a combination of Freezer (my nickname) and "ware" as in freeware and software. Over the years certain programs have proven to be more popular. Those tools are:

ARP++ - ARP++ is the Windows Add/Remove Programs but on steroids. Years ago I discovered some programs install such that you cannot remove them with Windows ARP. Still other programs hide themselves from Windows ARP. ARP++ shows you all programs it can find installed on your system, and let's you uninstall them all.

Briscola - In high-school a friend taught me an Italian card game called Briscola. It's a lot of fun, but sadly I couldn't find any versions of it for the computer. Well that's not true, I found one version in Italian only. So I decided to write my own version. Give it a try, the rules are included in the help file.

PasswordSpy - PasswordSpy uses a design flaw in Windows to reveal passwords behind the "****" It works in most programs and on most versions of Windows, but sometimes there are passwords you cannot reveal using this tool.

ZoomIn - ZoomIn is, as the name implies, a screen magnifier. It's nothing more than the Microsoft tool of the same name (included in the Platform SDK) with a lot of improvements and fixes. I added features like a grid, RGB color display, the ability to copy or save the result as a BMP, etc.

Thank you for letting me toot my own horn. Look over the tools, there are a lot and hopefully you'll might find some that are useful.

Useful Utilities - Antivirus

Antivirus software is unfortunately just one of those things that you need in today's world.  But I hate most antivirus programs out there.  They are so invasive and resource intensive that in some ways they are as bad as the viruses they are protecting against.  They noticeably slow down your system and they noticeably slow down your network I/O as it scans packets.  They even do things they don't advertise - did you know Norton Antivirus is a firewall?  We found this out the hard way while testing WinINSTALL; communications were blocked yet the Windows firewall was disabled.

There are a number of free antivirus programs out there; some are good and some aren't.  Here's my take on them.

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Avast - Avast is probably the largest and best known free antivirus.  Whereas the program does a great job scanning for viruses, it is resource intensive.  And probably the worst problem is the UI.  Easily one of the worst UIs I've ever seen.  I'm scanning my system for viruses not using a car CD player (yes, if you haven't seen the program they designed it to look exactly like a car CD player).

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AVG - I'll admit I've never run AVG so I can't say much about it.  I've read reviews that said it was decent, but not as good as Avast.

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Microsoft Security Essentials - Microsoft shocked everyone late last year when they release MSE.  Even more shock at the fact that MSE was a great program.  My first exposure to MSE was a review of the top 5 free antivirus programs.  MSE was in beta at the time, it scored higher than all other programs except in scanning speed.  But the final version is faster than the beta.  Anyway, MSE is a great program.  This is now the free antivirus program I recommend to everyone.  It has a very clean UI.  The program is not too invasive.  My favorite part is the program can easily be set to either continuously monitor or only scan when I say to scan.  I use the latter because I don't like programs running all the time that slow my system down.  Give MSE a try, it's a great program.

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McAfee - McAfee has a free command-line virus scanner that is fast and simple.  There is no installation, just unzip and run.  There is no program running all the time scanning your system, it only runs when you actively initiate a scan.  It's just a super-lightweight antivirus program that's great to have.  The program is updated almost daily.  To download use FTP and visit ftp.mcafee.com/pub/antivirus/datfiles/4.x/.  The filename is sdat####.exe (the number changes daily as it's updated).  After you download it run "sdat####.exe /e" to extract the files.  After extraction the command "scan /adl /all /unzip" runs a full scan of your system, all files including compressed files.

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Spybot Search and Destroy - Whereas Spybot S&D is not a virus scanner, it does compliment a virus scanner very nicely.  It scans your system for other "problems" like spyware, adware, and malware.  Spybot S&D is very clean, simple, and fast.

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RootkitRevealer - The last tool is RootkitRevealer by SysInternals (Microsoft).  Really really nasty viruses embed themselves into your system as a rootkit.  This basically means that all standard methods of detecting the file even exists will fail.  There is no way to even see the file let alone remove it with a virus scanner.  But RootkitRevealer does reveal these files, so it's good to run this from time to time.

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Me personally I use Microsoft Security Essentials and McAfee for virus scans.  I occasionally run SpyBot and RootkitRevealer to round out the mix.