NEWSLETTER HISTORY

Here are some paragraphs from our previous newsletters - please feel free to suggest other programs and sites!!!

June 4, 2001

The "program of the week" is Windows Commander - it is a very nice "file-manager" (with a lot of extra features) - and is constantly in the top 5 most used applications on our systems!

The "technical page of the week" is http://grc.com/dos/grcdos.htm - a very good article about "Denial of Service attacks" (and about ISP responsibility, or rather lack of ... :)

June 11, 2001

This week we have two "programs of the week" - both are somehow dial-up related, but can be also used very well in other scenarios - and both are FREE ! (the second even with full source)

The first one is NetLauncher - it is a "freeware scheduler and dialer detecting online activity" - in other words it can start programs when you go online (and eventually log the date & time) and then can stop programs when you go offline - plus some other nice things!

The second is NetPerSec from ZDNet - the program is the equivalent of the "CPU Meter" from XDESK but for the network this time !!! Also note that you can start NetPerSec automatically from NetLauncher :)

The "web site of the week" is The Inquirer - very good and funny site with the latest IT news.

June 18, 2001

The program of the week is Tiny Personal Firewall - this program can be a VERY important protection for your computer and is free for home use (a similar program is ZoneAlarm - but our feeling is that ZoneAlarm is not working as well in certain conditions - like two CPUs).

The web site of the week is Isys Information Architects - very good (and also funny – some of the examples from the “Hall of Shame” are really hilarious) site about that important part of most programs that is often neglected or mishandled - the user interface! A special mention for their page on Common File Dialogs (and eventually the page about the Windows95 Find Applet ) - you will see why our XFilesDialog program can be such an important productivity enhancement!

June 25, 2001

The program of the week is VNC (Virtual Network Computing) - it is a free alternative to programs like “PC Anywhere” or “Remotely Possible”, and while the speed is not as good as in the commercial products the price is hard to beat if you only need the program occasionally :) (the source code is also available).

The web site of the week is Technology Review - a very nice site about science & technology!

July 2, 2001

Last week we had a program that could help you control a computer from a remote location but the program of this week - VMware Workstation - will do something even more interesting - it will let you run multiple "virtual computers" on the same machine at the same time - each "virtual computer" can have a different operating system so you can run at the same time from your machine DOS, Win 3.1, Win95, Win98, WinME, Win NT4, Win2k, Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD !!!

The web site of the week is the home for all PC Magazine Free Utilities (and source code is usually included!)

July 9, 2001

The program of the week is IrfanView - it's a very nice picture-viewer and it's free for non-commercial use!

We have two web sites of the week - Digital Photography Review and Steve's Digicams - both are about digital cameras and have a lot of interesting reviews!

July 16, 2001

The program of the week is RoboForm - it's a very useful web form filler and password manager - and it's free for non-commercial use!

The web site of the week is The Hardware Group - that's a small internet community oriented on computer hardware but their members have a lot of experience in a lot of other matters!

July 23, 2001 - TIP OF THE WEEK

In Windows you have a "Minimize All Windows" command (right-click on the taskbar in order to see it, or press <WIN> + <M>), but with XDESK you also have a "Maximize all" command (in the Main Menu / Utilities) !!!

July 23, 2001 - TECHNICAL NEWS

The program of the week is ClipCachePlus - it's a very nice "clipboard extender"!

The web site of the week is Sysinternals - a great place where you can find a lot of interesting utilities!

July 30, 2001 - TIP OF THE WEEK

Windows is sometimes using certain keys like <SHIFT> or <CTRL> as "special action modifiers" - for instance if <SHIFT> is pressed during the system initialization Windows will no longer launch the programs from the StartUp folder!

XFilesDialog can also recognize two special keys - if at the moment when a file-dialog is created the <SHIFT> key is down the dialog will NOT be enlarged (but the history menu and the current folder name will still be present) while if the <ALT> key is pressed the file-dialog will be left 100% unmodified!

July 30, 2001 - TECHNICAL NEWS

The program of the week is Proxomitron - it's one amazing "universal web filter"!

The web site of the week is littlewhitedog - a nice place for (funny) technical articles.

August 8 2001 - TIP OF THE WEEK

Since about v3.80 a new feature is present in XDESK - when you move any window (even windows from other programs) on the screen it is possible to automatically align it to other windows from the same desktop or to the screen edges - to disable that you have to go in XDESK Settings / Extra and uncheck "Sticky windows edges" - or keep the <SHIFT> key down when you move the window (and the <CTRL> key will only align it to "top-level" windows).

August 8 2001 - TECHNICAL NEWS

The program of the week is DAEMON Tools - it's a free program that will let you "mount" a CD image from a normal file (something that was part of all *NIX-es for quite some time)!

The web site of the week is MSDN Library - as long as you neglect the hype it's a very good place for technical information about Microsoft software!