April 20th, 2009 by Greg Steward
[Updated April 21, 2009]
Ever need to send via email a document to someone or to a large number of people? Can everyone read the same documents that you create in Microsoft Word, or Wordperfect, or Open Office? Probably not. The solution is to send PDFs instead.
The PDF (Portable Document Format) was created with the goal of making it possible to create a document that can be read by anyone who has installed a free PDF reader such as Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. (See Wikipedia for more options.)
PDFCreator and BullZip are two such applications that will produce documents in the PDF format. You create your document using any software that can print (Microsoft Word, Open Office, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Excel). Then you simply “print” to BullZip or PDFCreator (they will show up as one of your printers). After you start the print process, a window will come up with fields where you can give the document a title and indicate where on your computer to save the PDF file that will be produced.
With PDFCreator, at the bottom of the window are five buttons. If you select the “Wait-collect” button, PDFCreator will collect the pages that you are currently printing. You can then print other pages from the same or different applications. Once you have collected all the pages that you want in that PDF document, press the “Save” button. You will then see another window where you can select the directory and give the newly created file a name.
BullZip works in a similar fashion but has other features. I have them both installed, but find myself using BullZip more often these days.
You can download and use both BullZip and PDFCreator for free. There are other options as well. OpenOffice is freeware that competes with Microsoft Office and has PDF functionality built in.
August 10th, 2008 by Greg Steward
Ever get suspicious about what is running on your computer? A process viewer will answer that question. Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete (don’t do this on Windows ME and earlier) will bring up the task manager built into Windows, but there are many third party alternatives that provide more functionality and information.
I have been using “What’s Running,” a piece of freeware recommended at Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert. There you can read more about “What’s Running” and another suggested process viewer. Several times, as my computer slowed to a crawl, I was able to start-up “What’s Running” and there I could see what was consuming all the CPU time. Of course, if your computer is running slow, you might want to stretch your legs as you wait for the program to start running.
August 9th, 2008 by Greg Steward
Looking for some software but don’t have any money in the budget? Take a look at Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert where you will find two or three recommendations for each of over a hundred types of freeware and/or open source software.
There are a lot of great freeware products out there. Many are as good as or better than their commercial alternatives. But with so many great free products, how can you quickly find what you want?
That’s what we do at this site: in each program class we select the “best of the best” for you.
The name would indicate that it started out as a problem-solving site. It has grown from a one-man operation to a community of people who report on various types of software. The home page is titled “The Best-Ever Freeware Utilities,” but the list of categories goes from simple single-use utilities to full-featured applications such as Open Office (a worthy rival to Microsoft Office).
As always, use the typical precautions when downloading software. That said, I have never found a virus in any software that they have recommended.
August 6th, 2007 by Greg Steward
There is one computer utility that I use every day: xplorer². Xplorer² is a free (for the “lite” version) file management utility for Windows users. (Mac users don’t need it because they already have a perfect operating system.) After sufficient frustration with Windows Explorer, I tried many file management programs (in DOS-days, there was the wonderful Norton Commander) and I have found none better than xplorer².
I use it for finding files and, because it is a “dual-pane” explorer, copying and moving files is much easier than using the “single-pain” (no typo) Windows Explorer. I also use it to “load” or open a file. That is, if I want to open a PDF with Acrobat Reader, play an MP3 with Winamp, or edit a file in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, I first find the file using xplorer² (which is much faster) and then press the enter key. If the application is already running, pressing enter will open the file in that application; if the application is not running, it will start the application and then open the file.
Tip: I have also created a Window directly of short-cuts for frequently accessed directories and files. I have one short-cut (called bookmarks) in xplorer² that takes me to the Windows short-cut directory. Once there I find the file or directory I want and press enter to either load the file or move to the frequently accessed directory.
Xplorer² has many other uses as well. See the overview which also has some demos.
There are two versions: The free, “lite” version and the full-featured $29.95 version. I used the free version for many years and continued to get the newer free versions as they were released. Finally, I came to see the value of the “extras” you get with the full version so I eventually bought it. See a comparison of the two version on the “lite” page.
You can also download the full version and use it for free for 30 days; after that, it will revert to the “lite” version. I suggest using the “lite” version to get a feel for it and then take a look full version to see if you think it is worth buying for the extras.
I have been able to get the upgrades of the full version for no additional cost for a couple of years now. (At some point, I’m sure there will be an additional charge to upgrade.)
April 14th, 2007 by Greg Steward
If your software budget is small (like mine) you might like have a concise guide to some good freeware out there.
Gizmo Richard has a good site with a link to his 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities. If you sign up for his newsletter, you will get access to a list that has an additional 56+ recommendations.
I don’t provide any tech support, so use at your own discretion.
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