Myzips.com Software Blog

For those of us who must use workstations with limited program capability a thumb or flash drive can become a necessity.

What should you look for in a thumb drive? How much space do you need? These are the kinds of questions you should think about before going shopping. First of all let’s look at your needs. Are you a rough traveler? Do you tend to throw stuff in your bag? If you tend to be a little rougher on your peripherals, look for something that’s shockproof and if you shop around you might even find one that’s water resistant. No matter what you’re carrying on your drive look for something that won’t corrupt your data or shatter if you’re not entirely gentle. How much space is enough? You can find flash drives anywhere from 512 mb to 4 gb. If you don’t need more storage there’s no need to spend the extra money for 4 gb when you maybe only need one. Generally speaking, you’re looking at spending anywhere from 14.00 on up to 150.00 dollars or so depending on your needs. These days, you can find many applications that are available in portable versions. From Word processing programs to Photoshop, you can carry around a few programs that don’t make registry changes, don’t need installation and won’t get you in trouble with the IT department. You can also keep your music handy, documents, homework in case you don’t have a laptop or don’t want to take your laptop anywhere. Surprisingly, picking yourself up another peripheral might make your life a little easier. Work on projects away from home, write that paper that’s due tomorrow, and keep yourself entertained with music. All in all, a flash drive is a good little investment in portability. As with any peripheral or data storage, always make sure to back up your data in a separate place just in case.

Small Linux, true to its brash name, is a small and highly efficient live CD, an operating system which can be run from a CD-ROM drive or even from a flash drive (on newer computers).

DSL is based on the free Linux operating system, and is optimized to fit into only 50 megabytes of space, enough to store on a business-card mini-CD or a small flash drive. Starting up DSL is as simple as rebooting a computer with the DSL CD or flash drive inserted. It features advanced hardware detection that allows it to use almost any computer. Further, its minimalism means that it responds quickly on computers that are brand new or a decade old. Upon booting, one is shown a tutorial page, plus a desktop with icons for common applications such as web browsing (in Mozilla Firefox) and playing music (in XMMS). Right-clicking anywhere on the open desktop presents a menu which can be used to access still more applications, including a minimalist AOL Instant Messenger client and a terminal for executing text-only Linux commands. The MyDSL program allows one to download still more applications, including alternate browsers, instant messengers, games, and more. Why is DSL useful? Its intensely small design means that an otherwise useless old computer can be brought up to the tasks of playing MP3s and instant messaging. One can reboot into DSL on a strange and possibly virus-infected computer while on the go, bypassing spyware that might log information on what websites one visits. And for the knowledgeable computer user, DSL is useful for recovering files from damaged machines. You can even install it onto a hard drive to run it fulltime. While DSL may seem simple or strange, in reality it’s a powerful utility for making the most out of even the slowest computer.

Greenshot is an open source screen capture tool that is easy to use.

No install required just download, unzip, and execute greenshot.exe. It supports three types of screen captures; region, window, and full screen. Images can be saved as JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP. The screen shot can automatically save as a file, sent to a printer, clipboard, or image editor. The image editor supports drawing rectangle, ellipse, line, arrow, and add text. This screen capture tool is easy to use and can allows you to quickly add ellipses, rectangles, lines, and arrows to the image. Be warn this tool on its first execution sets itself up to be automatically when windows is started. This is easy turned off through changing its preferences. It also replaces the windows print screen key for capturing. If you are looking for a screen capture with more capabilities than the windows print key this might be it.

AbiWord is an excellent free open source alternative to MS Word.

Easy to install and operate on many operating systems Abiword is a perfect choice for someone on the look out for a new word processing program. Import files from Word, OpenOffice, Word Perfect, HTML, text and other file types. This is a perfect program if you are on the run as well. Small enough to load onto and run from a flash drive, take it with you and work on your documents on most any computer. Whether you’re working on a Mac or a PC you will have access to your important documents without a lot of hassle or fuss. For those less technically inclined there are plenty of help and FAQ resources both on the official Abiword website and elsewhere on the web. The included help files can ease you through importing your documents, exporting them to your email and setting the preferences to your liking. Regardless of your technical know-how you’ll be up and running quickly. Are you a developer? It’s great for you too. Find bugs, use it as a learning tool. You can even find a project to assist on. Great for budding developers to get some hands on working knowledge. Overall this is an excellent program for everyone from the basic user who just wants to write a document without any hassles to experienced developers with a need for a new project.

HiJack This is an ominous sounding piece of software; however, it is a very efficient piece of freeware.

This software actually pulls up the startup on a windows machine and lists all running processes; the user can then simply select which processes to “kill” to improve system performance. Which ever software is “killed” generally will not start again on a system reboot. The software is normally listed as a anti-spyware piece of software but it works just as effectively to reduce system drag associated with unwanted programs running in the background. It can be run from a flash (thumb) drive, or downloaded and put on the desktop and run from there. It has a file size of 392 KB, which means it takes no time to either download or use. A word of warning, if you utilize HiJack This and do not create a backup you could cause a serious operating issue on your computer. Start with the things that you know shouldn’t be there, like if you aren’t using McAfee anti-virus then it shouldn’t be listed in the “running” programs. There are some programs which are just easier to disable in their own interface as to prevent them from starting such as MS Messenger or Quicktime.

Winmerge is a visual difference application that runs under Windows and that can be a real lifesaver in a great number of situations.

For example, if you are in a programming team and want to synchronize with other members that work on the same source files, you can easily spot the differences and merge your work, and that of the others, in a snap. The interface is very user friendly and very graphical, but after some time everyone should discover that the shortcut keys can speed even more of the workflow.

With the alt+cursor keys you can navigate and merge the differences quickly. The software supports the difference of full trees of directories and you can define filters to visualize only the files that you are interested in. For example, you can exclude the .class files if you are a java developer.

Finally, you can select the “smartness” of the difference display. For example, choosing to ignore the empty lines. On the down side WinMerge has some quirks that can be annoying. The directory difference window is a bit confused, and the version that I have tried had some problems comparing directories over a Samba connection from a Windows PC to a Sun Workstation (nothing serious fortunately). All considered, however, Winmerge is the only windows application that goes near the quality of “Meld” (Unix), and can be recommended without hesitation.