WHAT PROGRAMS DO WE USE?

We are often asked what programs we use and what type of equipment we have. The test computer is a very basic P133 with a total of 2.2 gig of hard disk space (not enough!), a 2 meg S3 video card, 24 meg of RAM (Swap Montor reports it should be 80!!!) and uses Win95 as the O/S. The commercial programs which grace our hard drive include Corel Wordperfect Suite 8 Professional (superb); CorelDraw 8 (just arrived and we are withholding judgment at this time); Micrografx Webtricity (excellent, most of our graphics have been done using this suite); Norton Anti-Virus; and Norton Utilities (both excellent). The freeware programs we use regularly include the following...

W95 General Programs
Cetus CWordpad – basic word processor with spell checker. We use it for making on-line notes when we're surfing (for copying URLs, etc we find on-line), and for all other word processing where fancy layouts aren't required. Super NoteTab, the absolutely best text editor we've found for the W95 environment. Split Files Shell Extension for splitting up large files into chunks small enough to be transported by floppy disk. Other W95 programs we use regularly include: SuperZip file archiver; Photonyx image viewer; and the excellent Past, Present and Future calendar. All of these programs can be accessed from: W95 Text Programs

W95 Internet Related
MS Internet Explorer 4.x, while we feel is not quite as good as Netscape Communicator 4.x, is still an essential item on our desktop. WS_FTP LE is a fabulous ftp client and we use it exclusively for all file uploading. No other ftp client seems to do everything as easily as WS_FTP. Eudora Light is our choice of e-mail client. We have tried the opposition but keep on coming back to Eudora. Microsoft Gif Animator is used exclusively for ALL our animations, even though we have heavyweight commercial programs which do the same. Easy to use with the option for more advanced animations (like the animation on the 'front door'; of the CFS site). Arachnophilia is the souce-code HTML editor of our choice. It's occasional lapses are far outweighed by its good points, though we do occasionally use HomeSite v1.2 when we need features that program includes. We feel that a combination of the two is best, with Arachnophilia being used 90% of the time. Other terrific Internet-related programs we use constantly include: Net Vampire ftp downloader; WebFerret; MS IE4 Power Toys; FTBAB; InfoLink Checker; Endora V1.3; Country Codes; and SR-HTML32. You can access these programs from: W95 Internet Related

W95 Windows Extras
More Properties – to 'adjust' the W95 desktop to suit our requirements. Much better than Tweak GUI that Microsoft offers with the Power Toys download, More Properties allows us to carry out basic registry alterations/improvements. RegClean is also an essential enhancement for the W95 operating system.Use it at least once per week to clean out registry entries which have become redundant, and also rectify other problems with the W95 registry. Other W95 enhancements we use and consider essential are: 95 Extra; Power Toys; VueIcons; ImageSize; IE4.0 Tweaks; PEsx (checks EXE dependencies); Add/Remove Cleaner; and Gif For Explorer. Access all of these from: W95 Windows Extras

W95 Desktop Utilities
Yankee Clipper Plus is our most used W95 utility. It stores the past 50 clipboard entries on hard disk and you can access them by scrolling through the list and double-clicking on the item you want put back into the clipboard. We reckon none of the other clipboard utilities are as good as Yankee Clipper. Sandra (a system diagnostic tool) is another well-used program. There is little about computer hardware that Sandra can't offer – much more than most people could ever use. Convert is the best conversion program we've found. Convert handles temperature, distance, cubic measurement, etc. Easy to use and offers a wide variety of conversions. Other utilities we use all the time include: Tree-Size; flipTech Swap Monitor; GrabIt; and SnadBoy's TopDesk. Access them all from: W95 Desktop Utilities

W95 General Games
We tend to like quick games (we don't have time for anything longer than about a 10 minute break) so this colors the type of games we use. Many are boardgames or cardgames. The games we use are not necessarily the fanciest or 'best' games, just the ones we like. Top of the list is Mah-Jongg v5.01 (later releases are shareware), but we also like CyberMind. Others include FreeCell (part of W95 and not accessible from the CFS site); Bubble Puzzle 97 and PokoMan. Access all (except FreeCell) from: W95 General Games

W31/DOS General Programs
Favorites include PagePlus Intro desktop publishing; QuickVerse KJV Bible (we also use the NIV version which we had purchased); SpellChecker For Edit Boxes; and LViewPro16 graphics program. Access them all from: W31 General Programs

W31/DOS Internet Related
Our favorite W31 Internet-related program is Atomic Clock which keeps our computer's clock accurate. Access it from: W31 Internet Related

W31/DOS Windows Extras
Our favorite in this section is Clean System Directory which moves unused DLLs into its own special directory for later (much later!) deletion or removela to floppy disk. We advise that you run this program at least monthly. Access it from: W31 Windows Extras

W31/DOS Desktop Utilities
We have two favorites in this section – Stiletto, a fabulous button bar launcher which works just as well under W95 as it does under W31 and lives as the top item on the screen; and Stuffit Expander which unzips files into their own sub-directory. Unfortunately Stuffit Expander truncates file names longer than 8 characters and some patching must be done if a W95 program has a long file name. Access both these beauties from: W31 Desktop Utilities

W31/DOS General Games
There are only a couple of games from this section we play regularly – and one isn't the 'best' by any means. They are Megapede 95 (for when we're in a stupid mood and just need to zap something, somebody, anybody – just don't get in our way!) and St Helena which is a simple cardgame which we can usually win when playing (our egos need that sometimes too!). Access them from: W31 General Games

PLEASE NOTE

Jim Friedland wrote in pointing out that PAM, the archiving program mentioned last week, doesn't do a good job with long file names. It changes a blank between words into an underscore (eg: from 'This Is A Test.doc' to 'This_Is_A_Test.doc') which can be disastrous for many programs, specially setup ones. If you are using PAM you may have to check the archive before it's unzipped to see if the underscore is used anywhere, and then correct unzipped archived files. Unnecessarily complicated which is a shame because it's a good program apart from that.

IMPORTANT NEWS

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COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON

We are glad you survived Christmas (not so for millions of turkeys!) and hope that you have a terrific 1998. If you're snow-bound – or just very cold – just give a thought for the people in the Southern Hemisphere who are complaining about how hot is it for them over this period... (And imagine putting on a full 'Santa' outfit in 100+ degrees F!) Guess there's just no satisfying some people. Aren't you lucky you still have access to Completely Free Software!