"EPIMs of the Net"

General talks about EssentialPIM

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kiwi44
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Post by kiwi44 »

Hi All,

Came across a great pdf reader - very fast, and free! Can buy the features associated with the other pdf program, but at what seems to be a lower price. There is also a U3 program for you lovers of U3!

Check it out at [url]http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php[/url]

Rod
Linds
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Post by Linds »

http://www.econsultant.com/i-want-freew ... index.html

Great website for freeware and opensource software. Has over 450 free programs.
gtech
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Post by gtech »

Unless I'm blind, nobody yet has mentioned PINs

http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/pins.html

It is the secure passwords manager I've been using for many years now.

I just wish EPIM could have the same feature...

Gilles
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Post by telematoxx »

Map your Mind with freemind (linux version available)

you can savely store and manage all your passwords with keepass (linux compatible version available)

control two computers on your desk with only one keyboard and one mouse with synergy (ethernet required for both computers)

not freeware, but worth every cent: MaxiVista (ethernet required for both computers)
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mvisconte
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RSSOwl - update

Post by mvisconte »

yokozuna wrote:I will give some other examples:
1. RSSowl, http://www.rssowl.org , a cool RSS reader. Does not deserve .NET Framework (I hate it!), because it is a pure Java client. Very flexible, works well with different fonts (like Polish, Russian, Japanese).
An upate on RSSOwl... it is now available in a portable format (i.e., runs directly from a memory key, no need to install it on HD, no update to registry, etc.). You can find a copy along with a bunch of other great portable programs at
http://www.portableapps.com
- it's right nice.


Argh! Wrong address, but that's still a GREAT site. The RSSOwl site is http://www.quate.net/newsnet/read.php?id=32 - it will let you read RSS feeds on a portable key. Whew.
uzzer
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Re: A good suite of programs

Post by uzzer »

DominicW wrote:These programs are opensource and are all free products, one is an awesome notebook style program with typical Tree functionality and plug in development support:


http://keynote.prv.pl/


Keynote is the program I mentioned, but the author has others there that are quite cool.

Dominic
KeyNote is a great, brilliant program but it's development has been discontinued. What I've come up with to be a good "live" replacement of KeyNote is TreeDBNotes (http://www.mytreedb.com). Fortunately it has a free version (just as EssentialPIM does ;) ).

Update: someone has already cared to continue KeyNote! It's being developed under the name "KeyNote NF (New Features)": http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/
Last edited by uzzer on Thu Jan 22, 2009 6:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
uzzer
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Mkey

Post by uzzer »

http://serio-soft.com - MKey is a great freeware for customizing any key on any keyboard. Its interface is only in Russian and it has a few bugs but it let me do wonders with my multimedia keyboard.
uzzer
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Post by uzzer »

new user wrote:Has anyone tried openoffice.org - replaces most of microsoft office word/excel etc and can read/write in MS file formats? Its free and open source. Why should we let microsoft have our money? I also use Mozilla Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client - both free. Still use Windows though...

ps this software is brilliant
OpenOffice is too slow and it can't beat the new interface of MS Office 2007. I know many poeple curse the new interface because they just see something new and different. I personally got used to it in a month and it really pays off in usability.
Kefas
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Post by Kefas »

Seems like this thread died a bit. Someone should take upon them to keep an updated list of these great programs. I use some of them myself. Here's a few other great free pieces of software that has not already been mentioned (or that I didn't notice, at least).

TED Notepad - A great notepad replacement. Selfcontained.
WinSCP - A SFTP/FTP client for Windows. Also comes in a selfcontained version.
The GIMP - An open source image manipulation program.

That was just from the top of my head. There are more.
Jasper
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FastStone Image Viewer

Post by Jasper »

This free application has been mentioned here already but I don't recall anyone mentioning one of its aspects that I use quite a lot.
I tend to scan my correspondence and save it as images rather than bulky paper files, however the scan often comes out not quite square and 'Paint' only gives the option to rotate/correct by 90 degrees at a time. With FastStone Image Viewer however you can rotate/correct it in 0.1 degree increments all the way backward or forward through 360 degrees.
Just view your image in full screen, move the cursor to left edge of screen and select 'other' from the rotate options menu.

I'm sure there are lots of other programs that do this but this is the first FREE one I've come across that does it.

By the way FastStone Capture is an excellent screen capture program that will capture long pages in one go by auto-scrolling as it captures. It's not freeware now though I believe there is an early freeware version still out there somewhere.

Another excellent program is LinkStash which is a browser-independent Favorites/Bookmarks manager. Not free but well worth the money if you use more than one browser. You can try it for 30 days for free.
Actually I see you CAN get it for free if you're a foreign language speaker and are capable of properly translating it into your own language. - See the 'Translate' link on left of page.

AND .... While I'm here I might as well mention Stickies AGAIN which is a great freeware 'Post-it' type sticky-note program.
Jasper
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Post by Jasper »

To keep the thread going as per the 'Kefas' post.

All this is free stuff.

Try Recuva - file recovery, from the same people who make CCleaner, and surprise yourself at what is still on your drives but which you thought had been deleted!

To 'Recuva' from that shock - and remedy the situation - use Eraser and scrub the unused space/deleted files on your drives which normally is not overwritten until the space is needed for new files. Use it before you sell your computer (or take it in for repair).
You can also delete files/folders as you normally would but 'SECURELY', as well as securely moving files to different locations on your drives.
I'd steer clear of that 'Only first and last 2KB' option though, as I know it previously caused problems for some people. Mind you that WAS quite some time ago so maybe they've fixed it by now. I really haven't found any need for it anyway.

There is of course CCleaner (originally CrapCleaner) which cleans and refreshes clogged-up drives, but we all know about that don't we!

Feeling paranoid? In that case encrypt your folders or drives with the free and open-source TrueCrypt. The latest version even allows you to encrypt your operating system so you need to provide a password right from start-up! I imagine that even moving the physical drive to another machine would not allow it to be accessed by any evil-doers around.

Can't delete/access a file because it's being "Used by another process" but it doesn't say WHICH process? Try mst IsUsedBy which pops up a little window into which you drag the file in question to find out which process is using it.

From the same page is mst MD5 which again gives a little window for file dragging and which gives the MD5 hash for that file. Useful if you want to confirm that a file hasn't been corrupted during download or whatever, or even to check if the program you've just downloaded is a different version from the one you had before. You can click the map-pin icon (top left) to keep it on top of other pages.

For more complex hashes or even for hashing just lines of text, you might try the 'Hasher' tool from Karen's Power Tools. This page has other free tools as well. The 'Replicator' and the 'Time Sync' tools are good but I haven't tried most of the others.

Do you use 'Task Manager' to see what processes are using your memory at that moment, but still don't know what all the multiple svchost.exe processes are?
Use Process Explorer instead, and hover your cursor over the process to find out. It's been described as Task Manager on steroids!

Also from SysInternals is TCPView (only 94KB) which shows just WHO you're connecting to whilst on the internet. I have it running all the time. The 'WhoIs' facility is a bit iffy so I use WhoIsView instead. It's old but small and it works! It was made by Softnik but is now hosted by MyToolPad. The download link at the top appears to be duff but you can download the installation pack or just the exec file toward the bottom part of the page. Paste The TCPView line in but strip out everything except the IP address.

If you want to know WHAT your computer is sending or receiving then try the Ethereal packet sniffer and have a look at as many of the traffic packets as you want. It's easy enough to set up. Just make sure you've picked the right 'Capture' interface, i.e. dial-up or network connection or whatever and remember that unless you've set it to real time scrolling you won't see any packets until you STOP the capture. Also don't forget it's running or you'll end up with thousands of packet captures using up some of your memory. You can save or dump them when you stop the capture.

Hmmm, I find that writing this stuff has been quite useful, as whilst I've been getting the various Web URL addresses I've come across a couple of updates that I hadn't been aware of.

By the way, EPIM v2.5 was released yesterday though I've only seen one mention of it in the forum so far.

I know some of this stuff is mentioned previously but I couldn't be bothered reading all the previous pages again and re-editing my notepad file before I posted this. Apologies, if anyone's p'd off about it.
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Post by Max »

Thank you Jasper,
I myself use TrueCrypt- indeed a worthwhile piece of software!
Maxim,
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Kefas
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Re: FastStone Image Viewer

Post by Kefas »

Jasper wrote:By the way FastStone Capture is an excellent screen capture program that will capture long pages in one go by auto-scrolling as it captures. It's not freeware now though I believe there is an early freeware version still out there somewhere.
I second that! I used it for over a year, and it's simply put a gem. Easily meets all your screen capturing needs without being a nuisance in terms of memory hogging or slow upstart. It just sits there in the sys tray readily available.

Although 5.3 is more than sufficient (you can still get hold of it), I recently caved out the $20 for a license for version 6.0 to get that warm fuzzy feeling of supporting something you like. But it is well worth its price.

Oh, and it's portable too!
Jasper
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Want a FREE PDF Creator???

Post by Jasper »

Just found a reference to this in the latest issue of WinXP News

Its PDF Creator from SourceForge.Net and its FREE and Open Source

I downloaded and opened it only about 10 minutes ago and initially it looks good. That's about all I can say about it at the moment.

If you leave it to me you'll probably have to wait a long time for a report while I cautiously stumble through the program, so if anyone has existing PDF creation know-how maybe they could try it out and let us know if it's the real deal?

Regards,
Jasper
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Post by Jasper »

Whilst paying my local taxes via the Web recently I was given a tip about a much fuller free PDF option. (I'll probably have an extra item on the tax bill for 'Web Services' next time.)

This is the pdf995 Suite which consists of a PDF creator, a (limited) editor and an encryption tool for secure document signing/transmission.
You can also use it to create a multi-page PDF from separate docs/images or combine existing PDF pages into a single document.
I think you can also extract pages from PDF's and save them in various formats.

Don't know why I was so enthused about the item in my previous post above. - Think I'll change my tobacconist!
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