WinRAR is an archive manager with support for packing RAR and ZIP archives and unpacking RAR, ZIP, ZIP64, 7Z (7-Zip), CAB, ARJ, LZH (Lempel-Ziv-Huffman), TAR, GZ, ACE, UUE, BZ2, JAR (Java Archive developed by Sun Microsystems) and ISO (ISO9660) archives. You may use it to backup your data, reduce the size of email attachments, decompress files downloaded from the Internet and create your own file archives.

Bugs Fixed:

• WinRAR 3.91 reported the incorrect “Unexpected end of archive”
  error, when opening an empty ZIP archive created with
  “New WinRAR ZIP archive” context menu command.
• If “Delete archive” option was enabled when unpacking several
  ZIP archives and if one of archives was damaged, WinRAR did not
  delete archives after the damaged one, even if they were unpacked
  successfully.
• If file matched two different masks in RarFiles.lst, WinRAR
  could select the last match. Normally, if neither of masks
  is a subset of another, the first match must be chosen.

If you’re looking to download it, you can head over to RARLabs’ download page.

This might seem like something that you really don’t need, but lots of times you don’t know where to back up your data, especially if you have a lot of data to backup. This won’t save you from a hard drive failure, so it isn’t a cure all. This will sometimes however save you from a really nasty virus that you just can not seem to get around, and the only option is to reformat your entire hard drive which would mean wiping everything clean and starting fresh, with nothing.

Luckily there are tools that have been created to help you get around losing everything. There is a great, 100% free tool from EaseUs called Partition Master Home Edition. This is one of those tools out to get a type of software that some pay hundreds for, it is a quick and simple replacement for Symantec’s Partition Magic. If you don’t know what that is, then don’t worry it isn’t really nessasary information. However using this program will save you time and also relieve your mind from stress of losing everything you have worked hard to create.

The website has pretty much all the information you need, from something like Resizing or Moving partitions without data loss for better disk space management to Extending NTFS system partitions without a reboot to maximize PC performance.

I use separate partitions to save all of my music, movies, and photos. Those types of things you just really do not want to re-download or find on Facebook or anything like that.

I hope this short and simple tip got you some peace of mind, before I knew about this stuff, my parents were always worried they were going to lose data forever, now they don’t have to worry, and neither do I!

A credible rival to MS Office, OpenOffice.org includes powerful applications for making text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, diagrams, and databases, as well as HTML and XML documents. Not only does it let you edit basic documents, such as letters and faxes, it also handles equations and complex and multipart documents with bibliographies, reference tables, and indexes.

Updated just a few hours ago, OpenOffice has added a few tweaks that are worth a try, and maybe even worth replacing Microsoft Office. Now with faster load times and more sleak highlighting (great for editing papers!), it is much more worth it to download this free software.

I like to think of OpenOffice as the Firefox of the office suites. It is the replacement that lot’s of people enjoy and use all the time. It supports 27 languages and has more added all the time.

OpenOffice 3.2 for Windows, Mac, and Linux also sees the debut of comments in Impress, encryption support for Office 2007-formatted files, and smoother sort, merge, and copy and paste functions in Calc.

The only thing that this product seems to lack is Windows 7 specific features, like Aero peek and and jump lists. Hopefully those will come around soon, but this is a multiplatform application, so let’s just say that the product is doing it’s job quite nicely.

Gotta thank CNet for this gem, it’s strange because now Opera is going for the iPhone and it’s the fastest browser around? Crazy stakes Opera has been making now a days! I think it might be worth the try, they are competing with some crazy giants out there, so it might be worth a shot.

Opera moves its latest browser build out of alpha development and into beta and claims that Opera 10.50 beta is the fastest browser currently available. It’s not clear at the moment whether it’s faster than Google Chrome’s development builds, or merely as fast as, but there’s no doubt that this new beta should draw a lot of attention for its performance.

For users who didn’t take a look at the pre-alpha builds released in December 2009 and January 2010, Opera 10.50 has been fully optimized for Windows 7, sporting a new interface, full Windows taskbar integration, and, most notably, a new JavaScript engine that Opera claims makes it faster than Google Chrome.

The new Carakan JavaScript engine is the most important improvement, and the reason behind the browser’s faster performance. In empirical tests performed last month on an HP desktop running an Intel Core 2 Q6600 at 2.66GHz with 4GB of RAM and Windows 7 32-bit, the Opera 10.50 pre-alpha scored 435.6 milliseconds in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. By contrast, Google Chrome 4.0.266.0, the most recent development build at the time, notched 510.4 ms. Opera 10.10, the current stable build, was more than 7.5 times slower, at 3284.4 ms.

[via CNet]

This is for those discs that show files when you load them up, but wont play correctly for whatever reason. Let’s call these discs 50% broken. Really the only time you will need this is if you really need to get data off of something, anything, really. It doesn’t have to be a CD or a DVD, it can be a harddrive, or a flash drive, or even a floppy.. I guess.

If you’re looking to download the software, then you are going to want to go here. If you are looking for the software’s website in general, then this is the link you want to follow. Hope it works for you! If you need any help recovering any data beyond this, such as lost photos or other documents that you might have lost for whatever reason, then give me a call! Remember only call if your in the Naperville area of Illinois, cause I definitely can’t travel around the country.. yet.

Thanks for reading! If this helped you, let me know! It’s great knowing that I helped people out in some way, I love the feeling!

If you live in a very rural area, then obviously this isn’t for you unless you think some crazy guy is living under a rock near your house, but if you are that worried about it then you should probably hire some sort of private investigator.

If you live in an apartment complex, then you should probably check this out! Even with security measures and passwords in place, you never know who might be connected to your network! It’s worth checking out, because obviously you don’t want your profiles stolen with contact information or more!

As you can see from the screenshot on the left, it shows both my router and my iPhone as the only connected devices on my network, which is just how it should be. I only know what these two devices are because I assigned them their IP Addresses manually, and also I know their MAC Addresses as well. If you see something in this list that you don’t recognize, you are unsecured and should change your security practices with your router quickly!

The software states on their website that it only works with Windows Vista, but apparently they have not updated their website since Windows 7 was released. It works just fine with Windows 7, but I could not get it to work correctly with Windows XP. It installed just fine, but it would not show any output while scanning (in XP).

ZamZom Homepage
Direct Download

This software seems so simple at first glance, that you might just walk away from it without really giving it a chance. Well I gave it a chance, though about it, and deemed it to be worth it! The software is relatively simple, all you do is follow it’s instructions and you need to have a bluetooth equipped cellphone.

The premise is this, when you are near your computer, it will magically itself because you are in close proximity, but when you move away from your computer, it locks itself! I suppose this would only work if you keep your phone in your pocket or if you keep your purse with you at absolutely all times, if not it pretty much defeats the purpose.

On the website for the application, it states boldly “laptop”, well I went ahead and tried it out to work with a bluetooth dongle attached to my home PC, and it worked just the same. I am guessing by “laptop” they mean that you need to have a bluetooth enabled computer, in some way, shape, or form.

It works pretty well, and since I work out of my home and don’t really have an office where snoopy people could get onto my computer, I don’t have much to worry about. The only thing I can find a good use for this for myself would be for family get togethers when there are little kids like my 10 year old nephews around (who have their own Facebook….), it will keep them from being on it when I am not around, which is definitely great for me. Otherwise, if you work in an office and your desk is open to predators, I suggest getting this for yourself and, if you don’t have one already, a bluetooth dongle which you can pick up for about $20 shipped from NewEgg.

For more information, and to download the trial edition of PhoenixFreeze (and to buy it, too) check out http://www.phoenixfreeze.com/

Arrrrr I'm a pirate!

From time to time a client will come up to me asking about pirated software and what they should do if they happen to encounter some of these forbidden goods. Like the Indiana Jones would do, keep away from it.

You have to think to yourself about who is giving these types of programs away, and will they really be beneficial enough to you without causing havoc and wrecking most of your computer? It’s really hard to make a justification as to why you should just stay away from free things, I understand it is extremely difficult, but in the end you could end up paying hundreds of dollars for someone to repair your computer because of a “Free Upgrade to Professional” that you happened to have heard about by a friend who got the idea from another friend.

In the end we never really know what is inside these programs, the people who are giving away thousands of dollars worth of software, can they really be trusted? They can never be trusted. Nobody can tattle tale on the people who made the software free in the first place because they have a virus from them, because they downloaded the software and gave themselves the virus. It’s one of those type of situations where you just need to stay away altogether so you don’t have any problems.

Problems come and go with free things, and they rarely happen to come if you just buy the software legitimately and have the developer fix all of the bugs and supply you with regular updates and hails from the mountain tops, it’s easier to stay safe legally.

My dad always says that if you don’t remember what happened, then you are lieing. You know what happened, you know why you’re computer suddenly wont start, you know why you’re computer makes an obnoxious whining noise from the hard drive every time you want to open Firefox. You know what you did!

I am not blaming anybody, of course, everyone wants free products especially in this economy, so it’s understandable that you might want to go ahead and take that risk of downloading some awesome digital photo editing software for free, but remember that when you do it you are taking a risk. It’s a risk and if you happen to end up hurting your computer at some point because of that free $400 editing software, then you might just end up paying for the software in the end, and then you won’t have it anymore, either. (Because you are paying a repairman…..)

A New Year’s resolution is a commitment that an individual makes to a project or the reforming of a habit, often a lifestyle change that is generally interpreted as advantageous. The name comes from the fact that these commitments normally go into effect on New Year’s Day. -Wikipedia

Now that I got the specific definition out of the way, let’s go with a few New Year’s resolutions for PC users, things that are computer related and things that don’t involve going to the gym, because who really wants to go to the gym anyways?

Security

Security on computers is rarely talked about anymore, everybody probably thinks that they are safe and sound and that they really don’t have anything to worry about behind their awesome router and awesome firewall, and their Windows 7. Sadly, that’s not always the truth and there are some people out in the world of the internet that will gladly destroy your entire life, for no reason. Please ignore the scare tactics, that’s not why I am writing this, and thankfully those type of things really don’t happen too often. It’s not a bad idea, however, to try to use some preventative medicine in these cases. There are several really great applications that you can use, but I will stick to the one’s that I know and love, I wont be telling you about random programs that I “think” are good, I’ll tell you about programs that I KNOW are good.

• AVG Free is a phenomenal Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware, since I installed Windows 7 back on that faithful day in October I have not had one problem what so ever with Spy ware, it has kept me clean as a whistle and probably even cleaner. I have not tried the full version of the software yet, but I can assume that if it’s any bit as good as the free version, it’s probably worth it. If you are paying hundreds of dollars a year for the competition, I suggest you save yourself a couple benjamins and go the free route, AVG Free.

• Another one of my favorites is Comodo Personal Firewall. Comodo has been fixing up their firewall all the time to make it one of the best on the market, and again, it’s 100% free, and just like AVG there is a paid version that offers more features, but for the regular home user it’s more than enough. At time’s it can get a bit naggy, for instance when installing some new software, or even when updating current software; but all that means is that it is doing it’s job, making sure that you know what you are doing. It also is a little bit annoying when you first install it, but at that time you are just training it, and usually after day two you barely even notice that it’s running, only when some crazy hacker tries to get into your computer to steal your Christmas pictures.

So there are two simple, free applications that can make the top of your new years resolution list and make your day easier in general. Both of these are worth the try, and if you need any help setting them up or making them work just let me know I’ll be glad to help!

Get rid of Adware, Spyware, and Malware

To further the protection of your Christmas photos, I suggest you get an up-to-date application to get rid of Adware, Spyware, and Malware. All are pretty much the same thing, they infect your computer and run in the background making your computer, and you, do pretty much everything you don’t want to do. My favorite would be Spybot Search & Destroy. It has been around for a long time now and I recommend it to everyone, it is always first on my list and has always gotten rid of what I wanted it to. It has a handy feature that will allow it to be the first application run on start-up, which will make sure it get’s rid of everything the first time, not the second or third.

Update Drivers

This is probably one of the simplest steps you can do, and honestly you might have been doing it all along without even noticing due to Windows Update being on top of things most of the time. Drivers are small “applications” that run in the background on start-up to make sure that certain things are working correctly, like the video card, processor (chip set), or even simpler things such as the mouse or keyboard. Usually the best place to check for updated drivers would be at the manufacturers website, such as Logitech for your mouse, keyboard, or even webcam drivers. Usually the first place to check for Video Card drivers would be at either nVidia’s website, or ATi’s (AMD) Website, if you aren’t sure which type of video card you have, you can check by going into your Control Panel, and looking under “Display”.

Clean out that dust

PLEASE don't let your computer look like this!!

If your computer looks anything like the one on the right, you should probably clean it. If your computer is still working and looks anything like the one on the right, I want to meet you. I would be a lot happier if you’re computer looked more like the one that was on the left, of course without the wires coming out of it and all that; at least it is clean. The best way to clean out the computer

This is hopefully what your computer kind of looks like!

I have found is taking it outside or in the garage or somewhere that you don’t mind blowing dust all over the place, because Compressed Air tends to do just that.. blow dust all over the place! If you don’t have any or don’t have any time to go and buy some, then you can GENTLY use a vacuum.. but I really do not like to give that sort of advice, mainly because if you break something off or something is loose, the vacuum might suck it up! If you are the LEAST BIT worried about doing any of this, just call me at (630) 363-1738 (if you are in the Naperville region of Illinois), I can help you out and get your computer all cleaned up without a problem. If you aren’t in that area, then I suggest finding your local computer guru and refer him to this article, he will know exactly what I am talking about.

Luckily they are both created by the same company, Piriform, which has been helping us with our problems since about 2005. They are a new company who states that their team is “is a combination of late-working, highly-skilled staff and a heavy dose of caffeine! Together we design, create and maintain the software.” - Basically, it’s the type of company that every up and coming programmer want’s to work for and be a part of.

CCleaner v2.27

CCleaner screenshot after a scan completed

Temporary files can take up more space on your computer than you think, and in return these temporary files might be scanned every single time a certain program or application is loaded, or even every time you turn on your computer! Now I am sure you don’t want that type of thing to happen so it would probably be best to check out this software, it can check just about everywhere in your computer for temporary files, and it only takes a few minutes! After which it tells you all the files it deleted and how much space was being taken up by these temporary files. I like it mainly because Windows 7 tends to keep a lot of files in it’s “Temporary Files” section, in the case on the right there were 3,118 files taking up alomst 2Gigs of data in stored under “System – Temporary Files”. So I like to think that is a pretty good example of where problems might come from.

The computer I am referencing for this application was already relatively quick, 4.00GB of ram, fast processor running at around 2.8Ghz, so if your computer is running extremely slow temporary files might be one of the problems (sorry for being a bit repetitive..). CCleaner also has a simple registry cleaner which works flawlessly and allows you to create a backup of the registry before doing anything too crazy. It just cleans up certain things in your registry that aren’t necessary for whatever reason it can think of, such as after an application has been uninstalled or maybe was part of some spy ware that was left behind from weeks or months or years ago.

All in all it’s definitely worth it, small download, quick install, and no bloat ware installed with it (make sure you choose to not install the Yahoo! toolbar that comes along with it, unless your into that kind of stuff, I guess)

Defraggler v1.1.5

Defraggler screenshot after analysing a relative clean computer.

After running the temporary file removing proffesional CCleaner, your next best bet is to Defragment your harddrive. Lot’s of times the normal, boring, Windows Defragmenter works just fine, but other times you just want to get rid of the simple Windows solution and use a third-party application that runs simply on donations. Piriform’s Defraggler is your best bet, and I’d put $50 on Defraggler if we were playing roulette. Defraggler shows you which files it is working on, and even has a very simple and quick to setup scheduler that runs in the background and you will never even know it is working.

From Wikipedia,  “Fragmentation occurs when the operating system cannot or will not allocate enough contiguous space to store a complete file as a unit, but instead puts parts of it in gaps between other files (usually those gaps exist because they formerly held a file that the operating system has subsequently deleted or because the operating system allocated excess space for the file in the first place). Larger files and greater numbers of files also contribute to fragmentation and consequent performance loss. Defragmentation attempts to alleviate these problems.”

Basically what that is saying is that if there isn’t enough physical space on the hard drive for a file to be placed, it will be split up across the hard drive and placed where ever happens to be the best place the hard drive thinks it will fall into place, its a veritable form of Tetris, using your information instead of colorful shapes.

Defraggler moves these files closer to one another, phyically, on the hard drive so that when they are accessed they are loaded faster and without many skips during access time, the scheduler is great in this case because it keeps your files all as close together, again physically, as possible; it also keeps you running smooth without you having to worry about a thing!

So what do you use? For a while I was using “Ultimate Defrag”, but that is nothing compared to the visually clean Defraggler. I can’t find anything better than these “pear shaped” goodies for a “pear shaped” company.