Introduction

Almost everyone who cares about security runs some kind of basic antivirus protection. Traditional antivirus protection works great for most users but no software is perfect. We live in a world full of security holes and bugs where patches and updates try to come to the rescue at the end of the day.

Want to know what happens when Windows starts?

This article is an overview of Windows startup with a flowchart and a couple of examples of the startup phases for immediate user logon and delayed user logon.

There are a number of freeware suites for system maintenance chores like cleanup, optimizing, and so forth and here is a new  one. Its name is the simple “System Utilities” and it comes  from a company in Hawaii called Synei.

Introduction

One way to find out which files are hogging disk space when your hard drive fills up is to use a specialist utility that displays your disk space usage. There are a number of excellent free utilities that differ mainly in the way the disk space usage is portrayed.

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Introduction

Over time unnecessary files accumulate, which can be removed with a disk cleaner.

Rated Products

Introduction

As I reviewed this category, I discovered there were a lot of free calculator programs available. Some are financial calculators, some are scientific calculators, and some are mixed use or what I called multi-purpose calculators.

Trying to pick the best free calculator that fits everyone is not an easy task. Check out below the rated calculators, each of which having its own specific purposes and functionality.

Introduction

An On-Screen Keyboard (OSK) is a virtual keyboard that is displayed on the computer screen and used as an alternative to a physical keyboard.

Besides using an OSK for accessibility recommended in Best Free Onscreen Keyboard for Accessibility, you may use an OSK to enhance your security and protect against malicious software. Security OSKs are useful for the following:

Introduction

Introduction

A color picker allows you to identify the color codes of any color present on your screen. This information can be helpful when editing an image, programming, writing HTML language or setting up a web page, etc.

There are many free color pickers to choose from. This review picks out a select few, based on the following features:

Transfer text and files between PCs and mobile devices easily at fast speed across Windows, Android, iOS, BlackBerry, OS X and Linux.

Sometimes you want to disconnect a USB drive or a flash memory card but Windows says it can’t be removed because it’s busy. Or maybe you just don’t like the “Safely Remove Hardware” function that sits in the notification area. If you are looking for a better way, you might try an open source alternative that will let you quickly and safely disconnect USB drives, even in some cases where Windows says you can't.

Introduction

Most cloud storage services claim they "take every precaution" to keep your data secure. For example, most use encryption to make sure your files are secure in transit. They "have internal policies and controls" to ensure that employees don't access your files. But things do go horribly wrong.

Introduction

Encryption is a process of encoding information so that it cannot be accessed by others unless they have the key needed to decode it. Encryption is usually used to protect highly sensitive documents, but it's also a good way to stop people from looking at your personal stuff.

Reduce mobile phone addiction by using this productivity app for free.

Check spelling errors and contextual grammatical mistakes for free.

Introduction

Genealogy software provides a method for recording the subjects of our research, e.g. their names, relationships, and events of their lives. Evidence (citations and sources) should be recorded to support the conclusions reached. They also print the reports and charts to show off the results of our labor.

Introduction

I tested several scenarios including the more common filing status, exemptions, income, adjustments, credits, other taxes, payments, etc. The recommended programs covered far more situations than those listed at IRS Free File. All are feature limited versions of commercial programs so expect to be nagged.

Jul 12 - Jul 18

Search and find out how stuff works to enrich your knowledge freely from this great website and its mobile apps.

I can remember back when I was young how alien a couple of lines of code that were published in a kid's magazine looked to me.  Some twenty years later (or should I better say a year ago), I decided that I should teach myself how to create some small and usable programs. Sad to say, I lost interest shortly after.

Introduction

Astronomy Software is a pretty broad spectrum, providing everything from simple mapping software (relative positions of the solar system), through detailed observation planning software to first-person planetarium software.

I looked at several free astronomy programs for producing sky maps and didn't pick a best as I couldn't decide among the three contenders for the top spot. The best for your purposes would depend on your needs.

There's a goldmine of quality stations streaming classical music, that can be tapped for free, through the Internet.

Improve Your XCOM 2 Experience

Important: It is much easier to ensure that all mod dependencies are met if using the Alternate Mod Launcher available at https://github.com/X2CommunityCore/xcom2-launcher.  Additionally for those so inclined it is also much easier to edit the config files of mods that have them.

Also important:  Add the XCOM 2 WOTC version of the Community Highlander mod.  Many of the mods below depend on it.

Play Kakuro puzzle games for free.

Enjoy this ad-free reversi app for Android, with evaluations of every possible move for you.

A very popular MOBA game that's easy to pick up and play with your teammates on mobile devices.

Create, save, search and share animated GIF images on social channels with this free app and online service.

A Real World Test

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Introduction

Introduction

A color picker allows you to identify the color codes of any color present on your screen. This information can be helpful when editing an image, programming, writing HTML language or setting up a web page, etc.

There are many free color pickers to choose from. This review picks out a select few, based on the following features:

An email app to cater for all your email accounts for free with no ads.

Google's native messaging app Messages now comes with chat features on supported carriers.

A free, clean and simple content reader for average and power users to subscribe to and read news feeds, and view any web articles you saved.

What is RSS?

RSS is an Internet protocol — a standardized way to publish frequently updated content to the Web. RSS makes it easy for originators to make their content quickly and broadly available. Many devices, including tablets, smartphones and PCs can easily access this content. RSS is short for "Really Simple Syndication", but don't worry about that phrase. It's just a dumb name for a beautiful idea.

VPNs and How we Reviewed Them

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have become an indispensable tool for many internet users in order to:

Search millions of subtitles for your movies and videos and get them for free. 

A free and excellent player for YouTube music in a pop-up floating window on your mobile devices.

I mentioned TubeMate YouTube Downloader before and it was one of the

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Introduction

Share files, clipboard content between Linux and Android wirelessly, browse mobile content from Linux and more.

Introduction

Network analysis tools enable diagnosis of problems or allow exploration of all hardware on a computer network.

They generally fall into three categories:

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Introduction

Remote Access Software (RAS) allows a user to remotely administer another computer through a GUI (Graphical User Interface).

RAS software usually falls into three categories:

Introduction

Many users want to transfer or share files with family and friends without getting involved with FTP or VPN networking. "Wouldn't it be great if I could effectively host my own website on my own PC?" Some rock-solid freeware products reviewed here let you do exactly that.

Rated Products

Introduction

Terminal emulators provide a telnet or SSH connection to UNIX like servers. Commercial products can emulate a wealth of terminal types and provide GUI face-lifting, etc. All are very nice, but this can leave the emulator feeling sluggish. Free implementations are more focused on the job at hand—providing a fast no-frills connection.

Introduction

If you ever accidentally open an exe program file in a text editor such as Notepad, you will be confronted with a mass of unintelligible garbage on your screen. Worse still if you write the exe file back to disk, the program file would almost certainly be corrupted and would not work.

I can remember back when I was young how alien a couple of lines of code that were published in a kid's magazine looked to me.  Some twenty years later (or should I better say a year ago), I decided that I should teach myself how to create some small and usable programs. Sad to say, I lost interest shortly after.

Introduction

A color picker allows you to identify the color codes of any color present on your screen. This information can be helpful when editing an image, programming, writing HTML language or setting up a web page, etc.

There are many free color pickers to choose from. This review picks out a select few, based on the following features:

Introduction

Programming editors, also known as source code editors, are text editors that are specifically designed for programmers or developers for writing the source code of an application or a program.

Introduction

Genealogy software provides a method for recording the subjects of our research, e.g. their names, relationships, and events of their lives. Evidence (citations and sources) should be recorded to support the conclusions reached. They also print the reports and charts to show off the results of our labor.

Introduction

Once you use Gizmo's to find the best freeware for your purposes, you need to download it from somewhere. Generally, I recommend that you use the software developer's site but that is not always possible. In that case, you have to go to one of the many repositories of freeware to be found on the web.

Introduction

This article compares audio software that enrich the music experience or enhance everyday listening, and provide impressive music centric features. The best MP3 and audio player ought to quench our passion for music, such as by inspiring us to rip or download music, organize our music libraries, learn more about our favorite artists or music, or just listen to music.

These are best free digital photo organizers that we found and were impressed enough to warrant recommendation.

Use this open source security software to encrypt or decrypt files on the move.

Encrypt and decrypt your data securely with this app complete with password generator and manager.

VPNs and How we Reviewed Them

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have become an indispensable tool for many internet users in order to:

Want to follow a detailed example of what happens when Windows starts?

In this article you will find the following detail about Windows startup:

• Descriptions of the major components.
• Detailed sequences of activities for each process.
• Example registry keys and values.

In early 2012 I wrote this short article describing the impact of registry cleaning on Windows XP performance. I never published it because I was primarily settling the question for my own satisfaction. Secondly, I shelved it when I started working on a longer article that provides more detail on the scenarios. I never finished that other article so now I'm publishing this shorter article because it will still be useful to the many Windows XP users.

Introduction

The freeware utility AIDA32 was for a long time the best system information / inventorying tool ever, regardless of price. It documented just about every aspect of your hardware and software configuration as well as checking networks and providing memory benchmarks.

Introduction

If you aren't aware of the condition of your hard drives, you may not be able to save your valuable data before it's too late. Not all hard drive crashes are random, so you may have time to backup your data before it fails completely.

A simple and free tool to check all hardware specifications of your Windows and Android devices.

A few days ago Rob posted an article on how to get the Windows Experience Index score back. Today we are going to showcase our PC Performance Scores using another freeware utility, Novabench. It is a benchmarking utility for Windows and Mac. Novabench is a versatile and advanced aggregator than WEI that tests the performance of various components of your computer and then assigns scores to each one of them. A higher score indicates a better performance. Novabench not only rates your computer but also can be used to find the various performance bottlenecks on your system.

Want to know what happens when Windows starts?

This article is an overview of Windows startup with a flowchart and a couple of examples of the startup phases for immediate user logon and delayed user logon.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of ways to tweak Windows and everybody has their favorites. Here’s an easy way to make many of your favorite tweaks in Windows 8/8.1 and possibly discover some new ones as well.

Have you ever wanted to pin your favorite folder, document, or control panel item to the Windows taskbar, only to find that you can’t do that directly?  Unfortunately, the straightforward way of pinning items to the taskbar is limited to program files only. If you want to pin something else there, you need a workaround. Or you can use one of the free little portable programs from Winaero that will allow you to pin almost anything to the taskbar. There is one for Windows 7 and one for Windows 8.