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Netcheck k- Garry Platt

By Garry Platt (May 2005 Issue)
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It’s Free! Free! Free I tell you! Well, they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch and that may be true. But it is a fact that there is free software to be had, and in this month’s ‘Netcheck’ I’m going to concentrate on what you can download from Internet and use for the grand cost of, well, nothing! The reason for this is simple: nearly all of us have a computer at home and equipping that machine with software packages can be an expensive hobby, usually requiring the liquidation of half your pension fund or the sale of your eldest born into slavery – and all this just to buy the most common of word processing packages. But there are options and alternatives that, despite being free, are neither naff nor limited in functionality. Indeed, some of them exceed their commercial equivalents. Anyway, take a look and see for yourselves; you will be surprised.

FIREFOX
Now that’s what I call a software title, even if it does share the name with one of Clint Eastwood’s worst films! Nearly all of us have Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) running on our machines, but because of its popularity it is frequently used as an access point to your data by Internet criminals. There are options, and in this case the option is both free and by general consensus an all together superior package than IE in its current incarnation of version 6. It’s 4.7mb in size to download so you need a fair amount of time if all you have is a modem link.

Firefox is generally considered a very user friendly and secure piece of software with an intuitive front end and a host of options, which means it can be tailored specifically to the needs of its user. This package can be downloaded from www.mozilla.org

It’s hardly strange that Firefox should be such a rattling good piece of software, especially when you consider that one of the very first Internet browsers available was produced by Mozilla and, indeed, in the early years of the Internet was almost universally used by everyone. Then, of course, Microsoft saw the commercial potential and came to dominate the scene.

THUNDERBIRD
Another great title again from the Mozilla Corporation, and this time it is a replacement for part of Microsoft’s Outlook program. This is an e-mail client par excellence. With this piece of software you can receive, download, prepare, edit and circulate e-mails filtering spam to your heart’s content and, once again, you can rest assured that compared to Microsoft’s package you are less likely to suffer a security breach via e-mails, viruses or related attacks. The website from which you can download this is www.mozilla.org

Like its sister product Firefox, Thunderbird enjoys much lower levels of security breaches and is less likely to be hacked. For some people this is reason enough to get the package for installation on their machine.

POWERBULLET PRESENTER
I think just about every trainer is familiar with, if not a user of, Microsoft’s PowerPoint. And for many of us we are not aware of any alternative, but there is one: Powerbullet Presenter. This program uses a simple text editor to put together what you would like to appear on your ‘slides’ and also allows you to introduce any graphics and pictures you might like to include. This can then be exported as a document that will run like a slideshow presentation. The program also allows you to utilise Flash programming with which you can create some very sophisticated effects without having to know an ounce of programming language. Visit www.powerbullet.com to find out more.

MICROSOFT PRODUCER
If you are already an owner of Microsoft Office PowerPoint (2002 or 2003), Producer allows you to produce equally sophisticated results, similar to Powerbullet Presenter, by combining and merging different types of media. The results can be a ‘production’ that makes a standard PowerPoint presentation look rather staid, old-fashioned and, frankly, somewhat tired. Take a look at www.microsoft.com

COPERNIC DESKTOP SEARCH
This is a superb piece of software and has made life with my own laptop so much easier and more efficient. Picture the following scene. Several months ago you used and stored a document, saving it on your hard disk. Now, you can’t quite remember where you filed it and it certainly isn’t in any of the principal folders you normally use. So now you turn to the Search function that appears on the Start menu at the bottom left of your screen. You enter the details of your search criteria and press return. The hard disk on your machine grinds into action and whirrs away searching for the lost file and, with a slow machine, it might take quite a time to find the offending document. Copernic Desktop Search is an alternative search facility, searching your hard disk(s) in less than a second! That’s because Copernic indexes your files and documents on a regular basis and ‘knows’ where everything is before it commences searching. Excellent! Go to www.copernic.com

PDF CREATOR
If, like me, you search and use the Internet as a resource for materials and undertake research using the World Wide Web you will frequently find or come across PDF documents created by Adobe Acrobat. There are certain benefits to using this format of documentation. First, you can ‘lock’ the document so that it cannot be altered or changed – useful if you want to make sure that attribution is not removed or altered. Second, the ability to read PDF documents does not rely on the ownership of commercial software such as Microsoft Word. You can download Adobe Reader free from adobe’s website at www.adobe.com

Typically, in order to create a pdf document you would need to buy Adobe Acrobat. However, a number of alternative software developers have come on the scene to offer the ability to produce these documents – and one of them is free: PDF Creator.

The process for turning your document into a pdf file once you have installed the software couldn’t be easier. You simply take action to print your selected document, but choose PDF Creator as the ‘printer’ you wish to use. Then, instead of printing the document, the software outputs a pdf file, which is in effect a conversion of the original document into a pdf document which you can elect to have placed in whichever folder you choose. Visit www.pdfcreator.de.vu to find out more.

OPEN OFFICE
The standard office software used today is, of course, Microsoft Office. It’s expensive if you are buying it yourself, but believe it or not there is a viable free alternative – Open Office (visit www.openoffice.org). It consists of four key packages: Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Multimedia Presentation and Drawing Tool. Given that this is a totally free piece of software it’s remarkable and works extremely well.

VIRUSES, SPYWARE AND POPUPS
These three words should cause concern for any IT user, especially those who regularly use the Internet for their business. Viruses are being released virtually every day onto the unsuspecting computer user. They’re usually developed by some hormonally imbalanced male teenager living in Akron, Ohio with a Britney Spears obsession and way too much free time or middle-aged and overweight men with massive inferiority complexes, receding hairlines, hideous taste in polyester trousers and, of course, a Britney Spears obsession. I digress …

Regardless of where they come from your computer needs protection from these viruses – and you don’t necessarily have to buy that protection, you can get it free. Two of the best free virus protection programs can be downloaded from the Internet and regularly updated to combat the latest virus releases. The two software packages are Avast! Antivirus which is located at www.avast.com and AVG which you can download from www.grisoft.com

Both programs are recognised as top class and will give your hardware a level of virus protection exceeded only by a few commercially available packages. Spyware really only started to take off in the last couple of years but it is very quickly becoming the number one baddy on the block. Spyware, unknown to yourself, is loaded onto your machine and proceeds to monitor what you do and collect vital information, like passwords, bank account numbers, and so on. Eventually this information is forwarded to malcontents who use it for their own nefarious reasons. Once again freeware rides to the rescue in the form of Spybot – Search and Destroy from www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

Alternatively Microsoft has its own free Spyware detection and removal program creatively called Microsoft Antispyware. I’ll bet coming up with that name took months of focus group meetings, strategy development conferences and who knows how many marketing consultants. Whatever, you can find it at www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/product

Finally Popups are those infuriating windows that open automatically on your screen when you’re surfing the net and visiting a commercial website. They eventually clutter the screen to the point that you don’t know where you are and use up masses of unnecessary bandwidth. You can stop them by using Popup NoNo, which you can get hold of at www.download.com/Pop-Up-No-No/3000-7786_4-10360533.html

Quick hits
As you can imagine, the collection of free shareware and limited trial software covered in this month’s ‘Netcheck’ is nowhere near exhaustive and merely represents my guess as to what items many readers of this column might be interested in. However, there are several Internet sites where this type of software has been collected together for ease of perusal. The following is a list of websites within which you can undertake your own searches for ‘amazing’ bits of software that you can download there and then.

http://decentdownloads.x-istence.com/
www.all4you.dk/freewareworld
www.download.com
www.freewareweb.com
www.livedownloads.co.uk
www.softpedia.com

Our thanks for this month’s ‘Netcheck’ go to Garry Platt, a senior consultant at the Woodland Grange Management Centre in Leamington Spa where he plays a key role in the centre’s provision of ongoing management training and development across both public and private sectors. If you think this edition of ‘Netcheck’ is good, bad, ugly or simply an affront to 10,000 years of human progress, do let Garry know at garry.platt@wgrange.com

Clare Forrest returns in the June issue to share her recent Internet finds.

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