Useful Sites and Things
This is a list of mainly computer related things that I have found useful. Unless otherwise stated, the items listed here are free.
File Conversion
Online Converters A magazine article containing links to a wide range of on-line file conversion programmes.
Software Archives
Winblows Installation
XP-LITE A commercial programme that allows removing much of the **** from Winblows XP and 2K. The free version is limited in capability but still useful.
nLITE A free tool for making distribution (installation) disks for Winblows XP and 2K. Similar to XP-LITE except that it cuts the **** before you install.
Winblows Ass Pains
PC Hell Clear language instructions for dealing with some of the “helpful” features of Winblows that drive you to distraction.
Winblows Utilities
There are numerous alternatives to the brain dead Winblows file manager. I personally use 2xexplorer .
For remote control on my personal lan, I use u ltravnc and have previously used tightvnc . To tunnel through firewalls and routers that do address translation, I use the free service of logmein.com . Hamachi used with one of the vnc programmes also allows tunneling but can be on the slow side.
CCleaner Crap cleaner to remove useless files and registry entries that may also be security risks or contribute to instability.
TrueCrypt On the fly encryption for portable drives.
Secure File Deletion Collection of utilities for this. I personally use eraser and sdelete
Typically, only a small number of files on Winblows are seriously fragmented. You don’t need an expensive programme with a colorful interface to speed up your hard disk. XP has a command line utility defrag.exe that does the job. On both XP and 2K contig allows selective defragmentation. For a free programme with a colorful interface, try jkdefrag .
To recover unintentionally deleted files, I use ntfsundelete when there is a large number of files and restoration when there is a small number of files or ntfsundelete is ineffective. The latter programme is particularly good on flash drives, but the interface is clunky and tedious when a large number of files have been hosed. For a seriously trashed disk (partition table corrupted), zar seems to do the job although the freebie version is rather limited.
In you are driven nuts by the useless and redundant questions Winblows asks, ptfb (push the ****ing button) is a must have. The author now sells a bells and whistles version , but the older freebie version is more than adequate. Note that the old version has no installer. You copy it to an appropriate folder and arrange for it to start when windows does.
To control which programmes are automatically started by Windows, I use starter .
If you do not need all the bells and whistles of the increasingly expensive and bloated Adobe Acrobat package, these two packages seem to provide the basic printing and page creation functions: dopdf and pdfcreator . Both programmes seem to work properly with Japanese although pdfcreator may have garbled menus if you specify Japanese as the installation language.
Computer Hardware (Wintel only)
HdTune A hard disk health checker.
3 January 2008