eMusings

A dubious anniversary at best is the birthday of the first computer virus. Dubbed (Pakistani) ‘Brain’ it was developed by the (real) brothers Basit and Amjad. And affected the boot sector of floppy disks. Infected disks had their disk volume re-written as ‘© Brain’.

And if I recall correctly the virus caused the in-screen characters to slowly decay. Falling downward in rapidly fading jumbled streaks of green and amber; depending on the monochromatic monitor. For a more recent generation, something like the screen effects of the Matrix and Matrix Revolutions. And for a complete time line of the cyber virus evolution, do visit the Computer Virus Timeline that runs from 1949 to the present day.

That that was then. And in the now most people have never see a floppy disk. With CD (and increasingly DVD) the common exchange and install removable media of choice. But that doesn’t mean that malware has gone into hibernation. Far from it. It’s just all that more sophisticated. And doesn’t arrive on disk. More commonly from the Internet. Courtesy web sites with malicious code. Or emails with infected attachments that round-robin like do the rounds spreading disease and pestilence in their wake.

Yea I’m going on about spyware! And Microsoft AntiSpyware, one of the most popular, and free, Microsoft products has just been updated. Although the new update released Jan 20, 2006 bears version 1.0.701. It’s definitely an update of the existing x.701 released in late-2005.

Just the other day I finally decided I’d had enough of juggling files on my 80 GB secondary data disk. And with storage media prices crashing the way they have decided to upgrade to a 120 GB. True I could have upgraded to 160 but my company’s preferred manufacturer (Western Digital) wasn’t available. The word from corporate on high is absolutely no Seagate drives on account of 4 un-related drive failures in the space of one year (most probably from a series of bad batches)! With a caveat to avoid SATA as most company computers support only IDE drive controllers. All the same my new Samsung 120 GB is awesomely fast.

However what I didn’t relish was transferring approximately 78 GB of data to the new drive without replicating the partitions and folders of the old. Enter XXCopy 2.92.6, an enhanced version of the DOS XCopy utility included with every single Windows version. There are two XXCopy variants: free and Pro. The former is available for non-commercial (personal) use. Works only on standalone computers. And contains almost all features bar those for networked computers. The Pro version can support automated backup with advanced features. And available in 60-day trial full-featured version. The software is also available in separate 16- (8.3 fixed file names) and 32-bit (long file name) versions.

As an application XXcopy is simplicity itself. It runs from the command line. And offers over 200 command line options. You can also use the software to clone a bootable Windows9X/ME system disk!

Although I installed the Pro version as I needed to transfer some files from a network location to the new drive. I used a very simple set of switches (options) for the file transfers. But having worked with XCopy in the past and found it of limited intelligence. I was pleasantly surprised by XXCopy. Like being prompted once per transfer to approve creating a new root folder on the destination drive. But it was the transfer speeds that really wowed me.

I had begun using Total Commander’s fastcopy to replicate folders. Except a 10 GB folder took nearly 8 minutes. A fall back to Windows Explorer didn’t improve speeds. If anything they went down! XXCopy, in contrast, transferred a 21 GB folder structure in just under 60 seconds to its new home. And my 40 GB music collection was migrated to its new 50 MB home in just over 90 seconds! Absolutely amazing.

XXcopy is one of those applications that you don’t really need until you (as I) did. But once you do find it. You do wonder how you managed until the present. So don’t tarry, download a copy as soon as you can

There’s also a Total Commander 6.54 Beta 2 release. This resolves several bugs that crept by in the previous Beta 1 build. Other that this I didn’t notice anything significantly enhanced about the version. If you use Total Commander like I do as a versatile file and archive manager. You may want to download the recently upgraded 7Zip Plugin 0.4.8 built using the stable 7-Zip 4.32 base.

Do also download PDFCreator 0.9.0. Use this freeware printer driver to create PDFs. This version fixes several bugs and adds new features like PDF compression. It also supports x-64 Bit processors, along with Windows Terminal and Citrix Servers. Although the download size is large, the wait is well worth it. I use PDF Creator to capture all kinds of interesting web pages to PDF format.

And finally if you want to see how the forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 looks like. ActiveWin have put together a collection of over 50 screen captures of various facets and features. Click here to view Windows Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview Build 5299. And if you are feeling adventurous, you can also download and install this Beta.

That’s it for this week. Stay safe until the next time we meet.

The hottest news this week is release of Thunderbird 1.5. If you have installed one of the two RC (Release Candidate) builds, you should soon receive an update alert. Thunderbird 1.5, like Firefox 1.5, includes a program auto-update feature. However, my Thunderbird 1.5 RC2 when manually prompted is unable to find an update! Which seems quite strange. Inversely, its possible that RC2 is so close to the final build that it doesn’t really need to be updated.

While Thunderbird 1.5 offers lots of productivity-oriented features. Many extensions built for earlier versions are incompatible until their developers upgrade the max version to 1.6 or later. And while the current version (like its Firefox version namesake) can verify extension or theme compatibility. You still have to download the files before ‘seeing’ if they are indeed compatible.

I really like the Word-style (also in OpenOffice.org 2.x) spell-as-you-type feature that highlights mis-spelled terms. The included dictionary is also quite rich and you can add new terms to it. Just right-click the highlighted term and either choose a suggested correction, ignore or add the word. Thunderbird 1.5 junk mail controls have been improved to work with SpamAssasin and SpamPal. There’s also a built in phishing detector that I tested using the somewhat common PayPal and eBay account update notification messages. Drafts are not auto-saved and you can also remove message attachments. Filters too have improved with new actions for replying and forwarding. Search folders now search across multiple accounts.

The included RSS reader has been improved upon (although I prefer GreatNews). And now supports Podcasting too. There’s also message aging that I will test over the next week as I recently migrated to a new computer when my previous one died from old age.

All in all, Thunderbird 1.5 is more user-friendly that previous versions. But it remains a memory hog. And if you persist in running Windows with less than 256 MB of system RAM. Be prepared for the occasional lockup.

I also found GMail Manager, an interesting Firefox extension. Use it to manage multiple GMail accounts. You can view the message counts for the Inbox, unread mail and spam received for each configured account. Along with the total account usage. By default GMail Manager displays snippets for new mail received. And clicking a message will open a new Tab logged directly into GMail. The reviewed version (4.0) released December 15, 2005, besides resolving several bugs supports Unicode (UTF-8). Best of all you don’t have to “sign out” from one GMail account to check the contents of another account. And if you are among the (very) few who don’t have a GMail account, do write me to request one of the 20 Invitations On Offer. This offer ends February 15, 2006 or when the invites run out.

There’s also a new Total Commander 6.54 Beta 1 available. This Windows file manager replacement that uses a Norton Commander-like, dual-pane interface. It’s features include search, file comparison, directory synchronization, quick view panel with bitmap display, archive handling, and a built-in FTP client that supports FXP and HTTP proxies.

This new Beta introduces archive extraction support for the new BZIP2 and PPMd formats (also offered by Winzip). A complete list of changes is available in History654. Total Commander supports almost all mainstream archive formats out-of-the-box. And you can extend the archive feature with plugins for other formats, including the excellent 7Zip.

uTorrent 1.4 too has been released with lots of new features. In an aside if you download lots of Torrents you will be pleasantly surprised (as I was) with uTorrent’s acceptance on most trackers. The only other application to surpass it is the resource-hungry, Java-based, Azureus.

From some of the changes, its evident that most uTorrent user download Torrents in the workplace. There’s a new boss key. You can also disable multiscrape. And Torrent statistics are now part of the Help menu. You can also disable the application’s system tray behaviour. And double clicking a Torrent file will open the file. There’s also a new, secondary sort order. But Torrents are still listed in order of addition. Other changes include a new BitComet (until uTorrent’s appearance among the most widely-used Windows BitTorrent clients) style Torrent Add dialog. And also add labels to each Torrent queued including downloaded files.

And you may want to check out the excellent uTorrent FAQ that offers lots of tip on using this software. As well as improving your data transfer rates; both in- and out-bound.

And if you are a Windows user tired of downloading multiple updates. Microsoft has been listening. They have recently released a 98.7 MB ISO file containing all security and critical updates released on January 5^th and January 10^th, 2006. Do note that the ISO is Windows-specific and doesn’t include updates for other Microsoft products. It contains all language versions and is meant for corporate administrators managing large organizations who need to download multiple individual language versions for each update.

That’s it for this week. Stay safe until the next time.

Working on the oft-seen (at least in India especially on highways) premise that better late than never. Here’s this week’s Freeloader. And yes, in the new year there are several (relatively) sexy tools available for you to use.

Just this evening I chanced across Nakido a free Windows Explorer file sharing plug-in. It imposes no file transfer size limits unlike Pando that limits total transferable file size to 2 GB. Or restrict the number of files available for upload or download. All it asks is that the host computer be powered on and connected to the Internet.

There are two Nakido components. The first is a stand alone executable that runs as a local server on the hosting computer. The second is an ActiveX download that you need to install to active file sharing. And once installed you don’t need to use Internet Explorer or any other ActiveX-enabled Internet browser. Then from within the Windows (file) Explorer you can select the files to be shared. For each file shared Nakido will open a new window in your default web browser containing the download link.

The Nakido.com web site acts as the file tracker. The file link can be pasted into an email or sent via an instant message window to the recipient. But unlike Pando the recipient doesn’t need to have Nakido installed to receive files. But if they do, file transfer speeds are a lot faster with multiple mirrors available. In an informal test today I exchanged files between two separate computers. The source running Windows 2000 and the recipient running Linux. Although did notice that file transfers took a while to initialize. It wasn’t the connection speed for sure as both computers have separate 1 Mbps Internet connects. The main bottleneck appeared to be the Nakido tracking server.

If you hate spyware, what better way than to block such files at source with JavaCools free Spyware Blaster. For those who have never used it before, SpywareBlaster prevents Internet Explorer, Firefox/Mozilla and Windows itself from downloading dialers and other spyware. Updates to the database are quite frequent. But in the free version you need to manually update the application. The latest version is Spyware Blaster 3.5.1 that besides several bug fixes and tweaks, introduces a new Turbo-Update Technology for faster updates. If you already have a previous version installed, you will need to uninstall it before installing the new version.

Besides downloading the tons of warez and music available via the Torrent network. There are also lots of legal application, notably Linux distro (distributions) as well as the OpenOffice.org office suite available for the asking. After using a multitude of Torrent clients, I find the free uTorrent to be the best. It has a low memory footprint yet is very feature-rich. And the developer releases a new improved version at least once a week. The latest µTorrent 1.3.2 Beta Build 398 fixes several bugs including re-shuffling Torrent download order at startup, resolves a GUI bug in the new automated Speed Wizard, allows the tracker to handle “&ip=” and can tag partial Torrents with a .!ut extension.

Another really handy application is Multires, an update of the original 16-bit QuickRes Windows 9x Power Toy. The 32-bit Multires offers refresh rate, multi-user and multi-display settings for up to nine display devices for Windows 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP. It also includes scripting support for dynamic display arrays, fast user switching, and ClearType settings for both RGB/BGR and contrast. I installed Multires and found switching display resolutions a breeze.

That’s it for this week then. Stay safe until next time

Hi there! Wishing all my readers a Happy New 2006. Along with apologies for the missed column. I’ve been away enjoying the holidays far from the Internet. Yes, indeedy there are some parts of India where the Internet has still not established its presence.

I’ll strive to deliver something interesting later this week.

Stay safe until then.

Sorry for the delay in getting this column. Too much Christmas Cheer sort of wiped me out. I spent most of Boxing Day attempting to recover my equilibrium. As over the weekend evil companions plied with me too much (in hindsight anyway) dangerous liqueur. Now riding a ground swell of nostalgia, I have Bonnie Tyler’s Greatest Hits rocking around along in the background. But on to the free software for this last week of 2005.

Do you often despair at Windows Explorer’s fixed single pane view? If you do but are feeling a bit Scrooge-like. And don’t want to pay for the pleasure. You may want to checkout the free Turbo Navigator 1.47. This Windows Explorer replacement works with Windows 2000/XP/2003 and offers two panels. Its like using Explorer on steroids. With a few extras. I especially liked the instant disk space usage graph that slides out when you click the driver letter icon at the top of a panel. You can toggle between brief (file/folder names) and full (file/folder name, size, modified date/time and attributes) views. But you can’t customize the display to also view file extensions. You have to sort using the View > Sort by Extension command. This is clunky when compared even to Explorer where you can sort on multiple columns. (Tip: Right click between column headers to view a selectable pop-out list.)

But barring a few issues like this, overall Turbo Navigator is a powerful replacement. I find its Disk monitor especially handy when installing new programs. Or when performing disk-intensive file activity. Disk Monitor displays total drive size, bytes used, bytes free and data transfer rate. And if you are wondering why I need an external disk activity monitor. It’s because I recently accidently bent then broke the connector pins for the system power LED, disk activity LED and system reset while installing a new DVD writer.

There’s also a built in Media player that unfortunately only works with the CD/DVD-ROM drive. Yet despite adding .MP3 and .WAV files to the media types list I was unable to play in Turbo Navigator. But I was able to use the included Media Player to play audio CDs. There’s also a built-in file viewer that supports RTF, TXT, binary and hexadecimal files. However instead of displaying this information in a pop-up, the viewer overlays the existing twin-tab view. And its quite easy to accidentally terminate the Navigator when all you are really trying to do was close the Viewer. But Turbo Navigator remains an excellent Windows Explorer replacement. Download a copy from Last Freeware Version web site.

Octopus 3.11 is another free multi-threaded download client that works for both HTTP and FTP downloads. Octopus includes Proxy support. As well as site authorization. By default FTP transfers are done in passive mode (similar to a web browser). But this can be disabled. There’s also a download log for each job. However it seems this log is only available as long as the application is active. Close it and you also close out the log file. Interestingly, compared to other multi-threaded download clients where each segment’s saved with a proprietary extension, Octopus saves each thread with the original file’s extension.

The most exciting thing to happen this week is the release of IrfanView 3.98. This version, which requires its own companion 3.98_plugins file. Offers lots of tweaks and updates. And if you, like my son, have been wondering how the developer manages to release this fantastic program for free and still make ends meet. You need to stay alert during the Install process. IrfanView now includes (sponsored?) links to download and install the Google Toolbar and Google Desktop Search. Besides the usual bug fixes and tweaks. Other improvements to this excellent graphics processing application include extending the Thumbnail feature to include all sub-folders. The sideshow now supports alpha-blending effects. AFPL Ghostscript is also supported allowing IrfanView to display PS, EPS and PDF files. New image effects like Sepia and Raindrops have been added. And the JPEG format support has been improved to support lossless DPI. Actually the best way to find out how much better this utility has become is to download and install a copy for yourself.

The best BitTorrent download client, uTorrent, just got better. The new µTorrent 1.3.1 Beta Build 377 is significantly faster at downloading torrent files. Even where there are tracker problems. And the built-in RSS support has been improved as well. More information in the Changelog. Don’t delay: download a copy for your self today. You can also update the application from Help > Check for new version.

I have been meaning to write about Pando. This cool new free file transfer service lets you transfer any number of files to another Pando user. As long as the file size in under 1 GB. Transfers are handled through Pando.

Unfortunately, visiting the default Pando web site will not get you direct download access to the client. Nor will you be able to register to use the service. Instead, you’ll have to resort to some sneaky tricks. Begin by downloading a copy of the Pando client software via Fileforum. Then on install choose to register. This will open the service’s Registration from in your web browser. The process requires that your contact email ID is validated. So make sure to use a real ID instead of a fake All in all it took me under a minute to register. And just under 3 minutes to transfer a 2 MB file via my CDMA 112 kbps connection.

The Pando new file notification is emailed to the recepient. Who then has to either open their copy of Pando. Or if they still haven’t “got it” the notification message includes a handy download link. So happy Pandoing!

And in case we don’t meet again this month, Happy Holidays and a Happy New 2006. Stay Safe!