Software that we couldn't do without and that we feel no one else should
be without either. Amazon links are provided. Often we find that Amazon is
cheaper than direct from the supplier!
F-Prot
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This virus checking product, that has a long pedigree, is provided by
Frisk Software International of Iceland.
The DOS version is free for private use and for others it is $1 per computer,
$20 minimum, with bulk and educational discounts. The Windows versions cost
more but includes a real time checker. Signature files are regularly updated
and can be easily downloaded from a number of ftp sites or from the developer's
site. As of October 2001, the total number of viruses and Trojans detected
is somewhat over 58300.
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Zone Alarm Pro
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This fire-wall software protects computers against internet and email security
threats both initiated externally and from ones own PC (e.g. by unknown
executable). ZoneAlarm Pro can be customised for different security levels
and may be password protection. A customised table holds a list of approved
software or sites. When a potential attack is made (e.g. another computer
sniffing out whether a PC is on-line) a warning box can be displayed, and
then a trace can be initiated (though we often find that the source IP address
is one of a block of addresses belonging to an ISP). A log file records all
potential attacks. It is surprising, even for a dial-up user, how many attempts
are made. The record is about 30 seconds after logging on!
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The latest release also adds privacy protection. Banner ads can be blanked
out, Java scripts and applets and imbedded objects like Active X can be
suppressed, and those irritating pop-ups and pop-unders vanquished for
good!
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Amazon US: |
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Drive Image
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If, like us, you are dissatisfied with Windows 98 backup software, then give
Drive Image from
PowerQuest (now a Symantec company)
a review. As the name implies, Drive Image creates a backup of the whole
partition including critical MBRs and the FAT table. Drive Image can be scheduled
to backup an entire hard drive or single partitions. The backup image file
can be written to another drive or to removable media, spanning multiple
removable cartridges if the image is too large for one cartridge. With
the latest version, individual files and folders can be restored as well
as whole partitions. There is support for hard drives as large as 80GB.
If you buy this product, make sure you download and install the latest update
file 5.01.
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For copying whole partitions from one drive to another, then Drive Copy may
better meet your needs. Buy Drive Copy from Amazon
US or
UK.
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Buy from |
Amazon US: |
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Amazon UK: |
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Partition Magic
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Also from PowerQuest (now a
Symantec company), this is not a regularly used utility, but indispensable
when installing new hard disks or repairing an existing damaged hard disk.
With hard disks getting so large we recommend they are partitioned as a matter
of course to improve performance and minimise damage. It is also useful (and
sometimes mandatory) to install new operating systems to a separate partition,
say for evaluation. Partitioning hard disks with DOS utilities is difficult
and prone to error and of course there is no way with DOS to re-size a partition
or to change the FAT type (unless you backup all the data and reformat the
disk).
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Partition Magic does all these things "on the fly" via a clear graphical
interface. No wonder Partition Magic has won award after award. It supports
FAT, FAT32, NTFS, and Linux and comes with the BootMagic to easily select
a particular partition to re-boot to. If you buy this product,
make sure you download and install the latest update file 7.01.
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Buy from |
Amazon US: |
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Amazon UK: |
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Ad-aware
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Many advertising sites use cookies to build a profile of what sort of
sites interest you so that companies like DoubleClick can use this profiling
information to deliver targetted adverts. Cookies are harmless other
than an invasion of privacy.
-
But now many sites with advertising are using more under-handed practices.
These include adding or changing your Windows registry entries, changing
your browser default home page and even downloading executables! This
is either by using Java applets or hidding an executable amongst a free
download that you actually request. We had this happen when we downloaded
the latest video codec.
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Ad-aware, from a German Company
Lavasoft, will remove cookies, registry
entries and executables associated with advertising (collectively known as
Spyware). We think it is excellent. There is a free version and a $15
version that has automatic updates of the advertising profile files and a
real time checker.
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Buy from |
Amazon US: |
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Mozilla FireFox
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We have been using Mozilla FireFox for a year of
more as our browser of choice. Each release brings new features and stability
such that we now rarely use IE. Mozilla FireFox
is a free open source browser only. In November
2004,
Mozilla
FireFox was officially released. Additionally, there is the email
client Mozilla Thunderbird and a combined FireFox and Thunderbird simply
called Mozilla. As at the July 2005, the official release
of Firefox had been downloaded over 68m times.
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FireFox provides:
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Tab Browsing - so need to keep opening new windows, though you can do that
if you wish.
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Live Bookmarks in Action - lets you view RSS news and blog headlines in the
bookmarks toolbar or bookmarks menu.
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Popup Blocking - Stop annoying popup ads in their tracks.
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Privacy and Security - Firefox cannot run dangerous
ActiveX programs. Plus privacy tools keep your online activity private
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Smarter Search - Google Search is built right into the toolbar.
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Hassle-Free Downloading - Files you download are automatically saved to your
Desktop.
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RSS feed support
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and more!
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Web Page Editor: AOLPress 2.0
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This excellent WYSIWYG software is used to be available free from
AOL but since acquiring Netscape it
is no longer available. You may be able to find it on the web. Personally
we prefer AOLPress though unfortunately it doesn't support the latest browser
features. There are both 16 bit and 32 bit Windows versions. It supports
image maps, tables, frames, forms, spell checker (US), miniwebs for site
maintenance, and built-in up-loading facilities for AOL users (others need
to use FTP). There are built-in mini reference manuals and excellent tutorials
as well as full pdf manuals for downloading. It has proved quite reliable.
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Art Work Creation & Manipulation: Lotus SmartSuite
Freelance 2.1 with Paintshop Pro 3.11
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The images are screen captured from Freelance (part of Lotus SmartSuite package
- see below) into Paintshop where a standard web colour palette is
loaded and the image sized and checked for clarity. For GIF files any pure
white colours is changed to near white. All this is a bit labourious so please
tell us if you know a better way. Whilst AOLPress will automatically create
an image file from the clip-board and then paste it into the page, we found
the colours had all changed.
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Other images are provided by a clip art CD. They are usually copied into
Paintshop where the standard palette is set before they are saved to the
appropriate directory.
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Paintshop Pro
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Amazon US: |
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HTML: Firefox and Internet Explorer
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All changed pages are viewed in both Firefox 0.9 and in Internet Explorer
5.5. Older pages were checked with earlier versions of these software or
Netscape 4.7. If you find any problems with other versions of these browsers
or with other browsers please tell us.
Note that since introducing banner ads in July 2001, this web site no longer
works with Netscape version 3 or earlier and probably IE 3.0 and earlier.
Our log statistics show only one or two percent of visitors are using these.
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This product is no longer available: This useful software was available
from Greyscale Systems,
Australia. There are both 16 bit Windows 3.1x and 32 bit Windows 95 versions
and they can be downloaded with a 30 day trial period. It is a very fast
program that will check all internal and external references, perform search
and replace, find internal calls to a particular file, find orphans, and
report links used. This can be done for a whole site (directory and
sub-directory) or for a single file. From the reports window the htm files
can be edited, with your chosen editor, just by double-clicking on the reported
file name. Internal links are checked off-line before uploading. External
links are checked on-line.
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Development Support 1: Excel, NewWave Agent and
dtSearch 2.0
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An Excel spreadsheet is used to track all the pages, both actual and planned,
together with their status. Using a NewWave Agent script this spreadsheet
is also used to make more sophisticated mass changes to the
pages. Spreadsheets also hold the list of Financial Services companies
and the example SIM Framework companies. From all these spreadsheets the
relevant HTML pages are generated.
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All the HTML pages on the local hard disk are keyword indexed using dtSearch
from DT Software Inc.. This is an extremely
fast program that provides boolean search commands to help track down pages
with particular content.
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A NewWave Agent script reads the user responses from the
Dynamic Pricing Survey and records
the data in an Excel spreadsheet.
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Development Support 2: Lotus Approach & SuperBase
4
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SmartSuite
Buy from |
Amazon US: |
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Amazon UK: |
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This page last updated March 2005 ©
Managing Change 1997,98,99,2000,01,02,03,04,05
www.managingchange.com
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