Tag Archives: Freeware

Remote PC Help

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Tonight I got a chance to use LogMeIn Rescue and found it a very nice experience for helping a family member with their PC. Knowing it was a trial – I checked the license price…thinking that those I help could fund the license if it was cheap enough ($50-$150?). Well – It’s $1188 for a year subscription! This is really too bad for the helpful IT relative – unless you’re running a business it’s just not worth it. They should mark the price way down and limit you to say 4 connections a month or something…

So – a little Googling for a cheaper alternative revealed TeamViewer – which is free for personal use and looks to be fairly full featured. I’ll be using this next time somebody needs some PC help.

Installing Flash Player…for Firefox Portable

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Portable applications are a wonderful thing. Firefox portable is my favorite – with one downside – it doesn’t come with the flash plugin installed. Here’s how you fix that:

  • Download the Flash installer .exe from Adobe’s site (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/)
  • Use an unzipping program (like 7-zip portable) to open this executable (Within 7-zip the option once you’ve selected the file is “Open Inside” available if you right-click the file)
  • Extract the .dll and the .xpt files to your Plugins folder (Drive:\FirefoxDir\App\Firefox\Plugins)
  • Enjoy flash.

It’s really that simple – and didn’t even require a browser restart. Woot!

Wonderful Utilities – 7zip

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In continuing the theme of sharing what applications, themes, gadgets, etc. that I use and love – I present 7zip. 7zip is a FREE, open-source compression program (similar to WinZip).
What will it pack and unpack?

  • 7z
  • ZIP
  • GZIP
  • BZIP2
  • TAR

What will it only unpack?

  • RAR
  • CAB
  • ISO
  • ARJ
  • LZH
  • CHM
  • Z
  • CPIO
  • RPM
  • DEB
  • NSIS

Pretty handy! I’ve found it to be a direct replacement for the built-in Windows Compressed Files utility, as well as WinZip. Did I mention that it’s FREE? But with many open-source programs that are provided free, it is very appreciated that you donate to the group that produces it so that they can continue offering it for free. :) 7zip Homepage

WinAudit – a shameless plug for a nifty tool

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While surfing the interwebs, checking the emails, etc. I came upon a program called WinAudit. It’s a FREEware app that can report a lot of things about your machine and output it in a lot of different formats. Straight from their site: “The programme has advanced features such as service tag detection, hard-drive failure diagnosis, network port to process mapping, network connection speed, system availability statistics as well as Windows® update and firewall settings.”

Anyway – it’s pretty neat. My new employer is a “100% Microsoft Shop”, so I’m trying to move more that direction in the things I learn about and use on a daily basis. I’m all for open source, free software for all, and beautiful alternative user interfaces…but managing a 100% Microsoft Shop is surely going to have its peaks. All in all I’m looking forward to the opportunity. Only question I now have…should I switch my Linux server/media box to Windows Server 2003?

If you’ve got a handy free tool for the Windows world that makes your life easier – leave me a comment or two :)