Tech tips section

Tech tips and recommended software for your computer. Many people spend a lot of money each year on anti virus, firewalls, anti spyware, email clients, and office applications but many of these applications can be found on the net for free most of the free or Open Source versions are better than the retail versions.

Note: for now this is a windows only guide, if any one can do a Linux or mac version that would be a great help, Please email me.

The advantages of Open Source software to the home and small business user.

• Its FREE, of course this is a great start.

• Its Open Source, This means that the code that is used to make the software is available for all to use and edit.

• Up to date, Because the code is available to everyone many people can edit the code and improve it or fix bugs.

• Great community support, via web forums and email, support is normally provided direct from the coders not 3rd party.

• Fast and stable, Open Source software is normally very light weight and without the unneeded features of most retail software.

• Secure and privacy has become and issue with many closed source applications sending personal details back to the software developers, for example itunes and windows media player will send back lists of what music you listen to and what albums you own, this in the end is used to target adverts or provide to record company's for statistical use. This does not happen with Open Source software, the code is open for all to see so this sort of thing could not go unnoticed and can not be hidden inside the software.

So lets being here is the Wiltshire Computer User Groups recommended software list for every home user.

Anti Virus & Spyware Removal

Norton, McAffee, and Panda are a few names that might come to mind when you hear Anti Virus however these tend to cost £25-90 Per year Norton is about the best at detecting and removing viruses however it will slow your system down by about 15-25%. Check out these great free versions.

AVG. Is right now the biggest name in FREE anti virus. It is well funded by Intel, IBM, and Natwest Bank. Business users pay to use AVG, however home users get it FREE. It will use very little system resources on average slowing a system down by 2 - 5% This is our top recommended bit of software for your home PC.

AVG Home Page
Download

However ClamWin is a great portable application to have either on your pc as a backup incase your main anti virus software fails you, or ona USB pen to take with you to help a friend.

Homepage
Download

Spyware Blaster is a great prevention tool, with this installed on your PC many of the way that spyware installs itself on to your PC will be blocked off. This tool is not open source but it is 100% free, they do offer a pay version that has auto update but as long as you remember to click the update button once a week the free version does the same as the paid for. Check this out now, prevention is always better than cure!

Homepage
Download

Filezilla

Open Source FTP. Has the look and feel of CuteFTP but without the price tag. Used in the development of this site. Fillezilla is a web developers best friend, wcug.co.uk has over 4,000 files all uploaded and updated with Fillezilla

Homepage
Download

Forget paying £199-599 for Microsoft office, when Open Office is Free. Open Office has the same look and feel of Microsoft office 2003. It has all the same features and supports all the file formats of Microsoft office and many that office does not support. Open office runs on Windows, Linux and Mac its funded by Sun Microsystems and is updated regularly to support the latest technology's, file formats, document design methods etc.

Homepage
Download

GIMP

Homepage
Download

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins. This is as close to a Free Photoshop as your going to get.

Media Players, Codec and Tools

A codec is normally found as an addon or an extention to a program and it adds support for a file format to that program for Example:- If program "1" was made in 2006, and then in 2007 a audio or video format was made then program "1" would not understand how to read it, it would be like us trying to read french for the first time. A codec adds support for this new format/language to program "1" without the need to update the program or use the latest player from Company "X" some examples of codecs are DivX, XviD, OOG, Flack. all of these 4 will not work in Windows Media player because windows media player made before these codecs has even been invented, however with codecs installed on your system they will play in windows media player as normal.

Video Lan Player ( VLC )

Forget the codec downloads and the unable to play audio / video errors, VLC player will play about every video or audio format ever made without fail!

Homepage
Download

GreatNews Feed Reader

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an XML feed that streamlines content syndication. In other words, it's a way to subscribe to websites, and elements of websites, that you'd like to receive on an ongoing basis. WCUG offers RSS feeds for the entire site, specific sections. Just look for the RSS symbol as you navigate the site. Of course, you'll need an RSS reader. Don't have one? Try Google's. Or, if you use Firefox, you can use the built-in RSS feature called Live Bookmark. On any page, click the RSS icon RSS in the Status Bar and select the format you prefer. GreatNews Feed Reader, is a great feed reader, with to many features to list here, try it today and find out what your missing out on! Homepage Download Check out this detailed artical about why you should be using rss NOW ! Artical Link Here

Homepage
Download

uTorrent, BitTorrent client Is used to download .torrent files, BitTorrent is the latest in peer to peer file sharing technology. Many see BitTorrent as
a tool for downloading illegal material from the internet, However over 45% of the material on BitTorrent sites is 100% legal. You will find things like
Linux ISO files, Free creative commons movies, pictures, music and documents on many torrent trackers.

Homepage
Download

 Tech Tip: - How to use BitTorrent ?

1) You will need a torrent client, we recommend uTorrent or Azureus.
2) Once you have the torrent client installed. You need to download a .torrent file these
are small files that take a few seconds to download, when the torrent client reads the .torrent
file, it is told the list of people who have the torrent and will start looking for a local peer to download
from. This is why torrent is so fast, rather than downloading from others with limited download speeds torrents can connection to thousands of peers and download from all at once. making the download very fast.

List of sites where you can find .torrent file links :-

www.torrentz.com - Top torrent search engine, searches sites like, Mininova, The Pirate Bay, etc (Not all torrents are legal to download check first)

www.legaltorrents.com - Top creative commons films, music, pictures, software and boos all legal and 100% Free.

www.ostorr.org - Great free torrents for Open source torrents like, Linux ISO's, Open Office, TheOpenCD, FreeBSD, Joomla! plus other FOSS and OSS.

www.linuxtracker.org - Linux ISO and software torrents. Best source of Linux torrents.

www.torrentfreak.com - Latest torrent news, If its not on torrentfreak then it has not happened yet!

Azureus, Top Open Source torrent client, This is the most advanced BitTorrent client in the world, it has features uTorrent only dreams of however it can be a little to much for most home users.


Homepage
Download

Ventrilo 2.3.0 is the next evolutionary step of Voice over IP (VoIP) group communications software. Ventrilo is also the industry standard by which all others measure themselves as they attempt to imitate its features.

By offering surround sound positioning and special sound effects on a per user, per channel, per server or global configuration level the program provides each user the option to fully customize exactly how they wish to hear sounds from other users or events.

Ventrilo is best known for it's superior sound quality and minimal use of CPU resources so as not to interfere with day to day operations of the computer or during online game competitions. It is also preferred for the simple user interface that any first time computer user can very quickly learn because the most commonly used features are immediately visible and can be activated with a single click of the mouse.

Homepage
Download

TeamSpeak is a quality, scalable application which enables people to speak with one another over the Internet. TeamSpeak consists of both client and server software. The server acts as a host to multiple client connections, capable of handling literally thousands of simultaneous users. This results in an Internet based conferencing solution that works in a variety of applications such as team mates speaking with one another while playing their favorite online game, small businesses cutting costs on long distance charges, or for personal communication with friends and family.

Homepage
Download

Homepage
Download

• Run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single PC
• Experience the benefits of preconfigured products without any installation or configuration hassles
• Share data between host computer and virtual machine

Homepage
Download

Ubuntu VMware Image Download (need to find)
Gentoo Linux 2007 Image Download
Damn Small Linux Download

Homepage
Download

TightVNC is a free remote control software package derived from the popular VNC software. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer.

Homepage
Download

dosbox

Audiograbber is a beautiful piece of software that grabs digital audio from cd's. It copies the audio digitally-not through the soundcard-which enables you to make perfect copies of the originals. It can even perform a test to see that the copies really are perfect. Audiograbber can also automatically normalize the music, delete silence from the start and/or end of tracks, and send them to a variety or external MP3 encoders, such as Fraunhofers L3enc, or even use some MP3/WMA encoders internally for automatic creation of MP3's. Audiograbber can download and upload disc info from freedb, an Internet compact disc database. You can even record your vinyl LP's or cassette tapes with Audiograbber and make wav's or MP3's of them. There are a lot more functions in Audiograbber, but to put it simply: Audiograbber has the most features one can wish from such a program!

How to use

Homepage
Download

Trillian Basic 100% Free

Trillian™ is a fully featured, stand-alone, skinnable chat client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC. It provides capabilities not possible with original network clients, while supporting standard features such as audio chat, file transfers, group chats, chat rooms, buddy icons, multiple simultaneous connections to the same network, server-side contact importing, typing notification, direct connection (AIM), proxy support, encrypted messaging (AIM/ICQ), SMS support, and privacy settings.

Trillian provides unique functionality such as contact message history, a powerful skinning language, tabbed messaging, global status changes (set all networks away at once), Instant Lookup (automatic Wikipedia integration), contact alerts, an advanced automation system to trigger events based on anything happening in the client, docking, hundreds of emoticons, emotisounds, shell extensions for file transfers, and systray notifications.

Trillian PRO has some great features and is worth considering for a small fee.

Homepage
Download

Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once.

Pidgin can work with:

Pidgin is free software. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL)

Homepage
Download

DVD Shrink is software to backup DVD discs. You can use this software in conjunction with DVD burning software of your choice, to make a backup copy of any DVD video disc. DVD Shrink will also burn your backup DVD, if you have installed the latest version of Nero or if you can also download a demo version of Nero. If you already possess alternative burning software and prefer to stick with it, then you can still use DVD Shrink. The output from DVD Shrink can be saved as files on your hard drive, which you can then burn with software of your choice. DVD Shrink is Free software, but you would normaly use with NERO, nero has free trail and OEM versions.

Homepage
Download

Mozilla Firefox is not the most used web browser in the world, It overtook Microsoft's Internet Explorer web broswer in early 2006, and has gone from strength to strength ever since, the main reason so many people are now viewing the web with Firefox is because of three simple things :-

1) FREE, and Open source code.
2) Secure, and stable Firefox also offers the best protection against spyware as standard.
3) Addons, Many addons and extensions give firefox features and tools, other browsers only dream of.

Recommened addons :-

Foxmarks
Adblockplus
Google Gears
Fireshot
Adblock Plus
IE Tab

Addons recommended for web developers, WCUG site editors, and publishers.

Fireshot, See above
Colorzilla
Firebug
Web Developer

Joomla is an open source CMS and web development platform, Joomla is great for building any type of web site but its CMS tool are amazing, this site is built on the Joomla platform, Joomla provides all the RSS feeds out of the site, user login, site security, user profiles, private messaging, user access levels and community contribution editors. If you are thinking of building a comunity site, no matter how big or small Joomla is the right choice for you.


Homepage

Download
 

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.

Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including :-

• Community web portals
• Discussion sites
• Corporate web sites
• Intranet applications
• Personal web sites or blogs
• Aficionado sites
• E-commerce applications
• Resource directories
• Social Networking sites

Homepage

Download
 

x, Apache, MySQL,Perl, PHP, is a multi platform apache server setup for web development, it also has PHPMyAdmin, FTP and Email all builtin. This is a great web development and testing server for everyone. WCUG was designed on XAMPP before going live on the internet. Many people know from their own experience that it's not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start.

Homepage
Download
 

Easy web authoring

KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing.

KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding. It has been compared to programs like Front page and Dreamweaver.

Homepage
Download

WinRAR

• Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
• Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive.
• Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
• Provides two levels of plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:
  
  1) Hidden volume (steganography – more information may be found here).
  
  2) No TrueCrypt volume can be identified (volumes cannot be distinguished from random data).
• Encryption algorithms: AES-256, Serpent, and Twofish. Mode of operation: LRW.

  Further information regarding features of the software may be found in the documentation.

iSlayer Homepage

App Launcher is a real nice gadget for vista toolbar, This is my first install after installing vista. Nice and quick access to all the programs you use most! Very customizable with backgrounds, styles with and without titles small icons, big icons, the list goes on !