File Library

Often Recommended On The Cauldron

There are a number of freeware (and occasional shareware) programs that are often recommended on our message board when people are looking for ways to block pop-up ads, find and remove spyware, and generally improve their computing experience.We have collected these programs here and provided short descriptions and a link to the program's web site. While a few of these programs have Linux or Mac versions, most of these programs are for Windows XP, Vista, or Seven. (Assume Windows only if it is not mentioned.)

The decision to actually download and use one of these programs is yours. While most of these programs have been used successfully by at least one Cauldron member, that does not mean they will work on your computer! None of these programs are stored on The Cauldron's web site, so be doubly sure to check them for viruses with a good virus scanner with up to date virus signature files before you use them.

Ad-Aware

(Adware/Spyware Remover -- Freeware)
Some "free" programs and web sites place tracking codes and ad software on your computer. AdAware scans your memory, registry, hard, removable and optical drives for known data-mining, aggressive advertising, and tracking components. It then lists the results and offers to remove or quarantine the components. SpyBot Search & Destory (see below) generally finds more spyware, biut Ad-Aware catches some SpyBot does not. Be sure to read the documentation before having Ad-Aware remove any files.

ArsClip

(Clipboard Extender -- Freeware)
Have you even wished the Windows clipboard could hold more than one item at a time? ArsClip allows this. It monitors the clipboard and keeps track of the entries. Press a configurable hotkey and select an item (or items) from a popup menu to quickly paste into another application. If you do a lot of cut and paste, you will soon fall in love with this program.

EMS Free Surfer mk II

(Popup Ad Blocker -- Freeware)
EMS Free Surfer mk II is a freeware popup stopper for Internet Explorer. Free Surfer does not in any way interfere with opening new windows. No white lists, block lists or anything else to configure; just start it and surf in peace. Optionally, it can also disable those annoying GIF and Flash animations so often used in ads in web pages.

ieSpell

(Spelling Checker for Internet Explorer 5+ -- Freeware)
ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage (using a dictionary on your computer, not on another web site so it is very fast). The program installs as a new button in the IE toolbar (as well as a new menu item under "Tools") - after filling in a form, just hit the ieSpell button and it pops up a dialog, similar to the MS Word spell check. It's great for checking messages you write on our message board.

Magic Mail Monitor

(Pop3 Mail Account Monitor -- Freeware)
Magic Mail Monitor (MMM) is a POP3 mail monitor with multiple accounts support. It sits silently in your system tray, and notifies you about new messages in one of your mailboxes. Then you can preview messages and delete unwanted mail in order to avoid spam and viruses.

PowerPro

(Kitchen Sink Utility for Power Users -- Freeware)
PowerPro gives you a compact and powerful launch bar, menu, and tray icon facility. But this is just the start. With a little experimenting with its configuration, you'll find that you can use PowerPro to change the way you work with your Windows system. The source of its power is the way PowerPro integrates three capabilities: Running commands (tool bars, tray icons, hot keys, mouse actions, menus, timer, scheduler, etc.), Controlling other program's windows (close, minimize, maximize, roll-up to caption, tray minimize, position, etc.), Providing utility functions (send keystrokes to programs, run commands when windows first open, virtual desktops, clipboard extender, keyboard macros, shutdown, show all folder files in a menu, sounds, wallpaper, screensaver activation and randomization, etc.). This is a very complex, but very powerful tool for Windows power users.

SpyBot Search & Destory

(Adware/Spyware Remover -- Freeware)
Like Ad-Adware, SpyBot Search & Destory is an adware and spyware detection and removal tool. It also removes PC and Internet usage tracks, including browser history, temporary pages, cookies (with option to keep selected) and more. The program offers an attractive outlook-style interface and produces a detailed and easy to understand report before it deletes any files and allows you to deselect any item that you do not want to be processed. This is a more complex tool than Ad-Aware, but it seems to catch a lot of stuff that Ad-Aware misses. Be sure to read the documentation before having SpyBot remove any files.

Latest from Software Gadgets

The Software Gadgets Blog lists interesting and useful Windows software and online services -- mainly freeware or open source. A few items from this blog appear in the Cauldron and Candle newsletter each month. Here are the latest programs and onlive services listed in the Software Gadgets Blog.

AxCrypt -- File Encryption For Windows

Windows 7 Home Premium does not include file level encryption. This is limited to the more expensive (Professional and up) versions of Windows 7. While there are a number of freeware file encryption programs, I wanted one that worked as an Explorer extension for convenience and had both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. After looking around a bit, I discovered that Windows 7 and 64-bit support was still fairly rare. Fortunately, one of the better file encryption program, AxCrypt, had a beta version with Windows 7 and 64-bit support.

Major Features:

* Right-click integration with Windows Explorer makes AxCrypt the easiest way to encrypt individual files in Windows.

* Double-click integration makes it as easy to open, edit and save encrypted files as it is to work with unencrypted files.

* No configuration required, just install it and use it.

* AxCrypt encrypts files that are safely and easily sent to other users via e-mail or any other means. Self-decrypting files are also supported, removing the need to install AxCrypt to decrypt.

* AxCrypt is translated into English, Danish, Swedish, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Spanish, French, Italian and Norwegian so chances are it speaks your preferred language.

All Features

* Windows XP/Vista/2008/Windows 7 compatible, including 64-bit.
* AES encryption with 128-bit keys.
* Edit an encrypted document directly with double-click.
* Optional pass phrase cache - type pass phrases once per logon and/or reboot.
* Automatic pass phrase validation before decryption or editing.
* Key-File generation and support.
* No options or user interface - easy to install and use.
* Relatively light-weight, less than 1Mb download
* Extensive command-line interface.
* Server mode options.
* Huge file support > 4GB (on Windows NT/2K/XP).
* Dynamic brute force counter measure - iterative key wrapping.
* Integrates well with web based file sharing services.
* Selective compression before encryption - faster downloads/uploads.
* Retains original file name and information of an encrypted file.
* Integrated shredder.
* Shredding of all temporary and encrypted plaintext files.
* Secure memory handling - no keys or data in the paging file.
* Industry standard algorithms.
* Data integrity verification - no undetected modification.
* Unique data encryption keys used for every file and (re-)encryption.
* Polyglot - currently speaks English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian and Swedish.
* Easy to add more languages - contact me (I'm especially looking for Nordic languages)!
* Open source - no backdoors.
* Private branding support for commercial or corporate versions.
* It's FREE!

AxCrypt just works. Right click a file in Explorer and the AXCrypt submenu allows you to encrypt or decrypt it, among other options. You encrypt files with a pass phrase (which you can set to be remembered until you reboot or logout if you wish). While encrypted files have an .axx extension, double-clicking on them in Explorer still opens them in their original application. When you save from the application, the update file is automatically re-encrypted. AxCrypt just lets you do your work without getting in the way. Two warnings, however. First, if you forget your pass phrase, there is no "backdoor" in the program to allow you to recover your encrypted files. Second, as of this posting, the 1.7 version that works with Windows 7 and 64-bit versions of Windows is in beta. While I haven't discovered any data-eating bugs in the beta version, there could be some.

While AxCrypt is not quite as convenient as the built-in file encryption of the more expensive professional and ultimate versions of Windows, it seems quite good enough for the average user who only needs to keep a few files of financial and other personal data encrypted.

Rating: 4.0
Operating System: Windows XP/Vista/2008/Windows 7 compatible, including 64-bit
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version Tested: 1.7.1970.0 Beta
Web Site: http://www.axantum.com/axCrypt/

Take Command Console LE -- Freeware 4dos For Windows

Ages ago back in the days of DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 9x, I used a shareware replacement for the DOS command line (command.com) called 4dos (from JP Software). When I moved to XP, I briefly played with the 32-bit version (4nt), but decided that I did not use the command line enough to justify buying it. Using Linux for a few years reminded me of how useful a good command line can be, so I was happy to discover that JP Software now offered a version of there command line software for free: Take Command Console LE (TCCLE). TCCLE is a native 32-bit replacement for cmd.com with many new commands and features. Not as many as the payware version, of course, but TCCLE offers just about everything I remember from 4dos/4nt and more.

From the TCCLE web site:

TCC LE is a freely available version of our basic command processor (formerly known as 4NT). We have sold hundreds of thousands of copies of this product for $74.95. Now you can get a special version of the product for free. It's a big step up from CMD and with a lower learning curve than Powershell.

Enhanced Command Processor With Substantial Ease of Use Improvements

* Enhanced command line editor with history, filename completion and cut & paste
* Built-in screen scrollback buffer lets you review or print output from past commands at any time
* Enhanced Directory Navigation lets you quickly browse and change directories
* Built-in file viewer includes scrolling, search, and print capabilities

Powerful Windows Command Language Does The Work For You

* Core scripting language - large superset of CMD with 111 commands, 140 functions and 97 internal variables
* Upgraded CMD commands (e.g. DIR, COPY etc) with hundreds of additional options
Complete flow of control structures including IF-Then-Else, DO Loops, Switch, subroutines, batch libraries, etc.
* Redefine commands through aliasing, create new commands and functions for your regular tasks, even assign frequently used commands to a single keystroke
* Select or exclude files by date, time, size, and extended wildcards or regular expressions for extraordinary flexibility in file management

TCC/LE v11 is compatible with any version of Microsoft XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, and Windows 7, including 64-bit versions. It requires a minimum of 10Mb of free disk space.

While most people dread the command line, many power users tend to find it useful -- but find the standard windows CMD so underpowered as to be almost useless but find the new Powershell requires .NET programming knowledge to do much with. TCCLE is a good middle ground. While it is not bash or zsh (two powerful Unix command processors), it has plenty of power and does not require .NET programming knowledge to use effectively. It's CMD on steroids as opposed to something much different than CMD.

Rating: 5.0
Operating System: Windows XP or later
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version Tested: 11.00.37
Web Site: http://www.jpsoft.com/tccledes.htm

foobar2000 Audio Player on Windows 7

I've used Winamp or Windows Media Player on my PC since the Dark Ages simply because they were familiar and were good enough. My wife is a bit more picky about sound quality (and has far better speakers to be picky with) and has recently changed to foobar2000 as the very nice-sounding application that came with her sound card has not been updated in years. foobar2000 recently released a version 1.0 and my wife thought it sounded better on her system than any other audio player she tried, including a number of commercial players.

I discovered that the latest version of Windows Media Player that comes with Windows 7 is even more bloated than the previous one version that I used with XP -- but does not sound any better -- so I decided to give foobar2000 a try. The program is very light weight, especially when compared to Windows Media Player. Best of all, it sounds great -- even on my little Labtec speakers. While I haven't begun to configure the program with optional components and addins -- of which there are many -- it has become my player of choice in Windows 7.

From the foobar 2000 web site:

foobar2000 is an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform. Some of the basic features include full unicode support, ReplayGain support and native support for several popular audio formats.

Main features

* Supported audio formats: MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex, AU, SND... and more with additional components.
* Gapless playback.
* Full unicode support.
* Easily customizable user interface layout.
* Advanced tagging capabilities.
* Support for ripping Audio CDs as well as transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component.
* Full ReplayGain support.
* Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
* Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.

I have installed one addin, however, the Windows 7 Shell Integration component. This lets foobar2000 take full advantage of the Windows 7 taskbar with a jumplist and even player controls (pause, stop, etc) in the preview window you see when you over over a Windows 7 taskbar button. If you haven't given foobar2000 a try, you really should. It may not be much to look at (at least, not out of the box), but it produces great sound and does not hog memory or CPU.

Rating: 5.0
Operating System: Windows XP or later
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version Tested: 1.0
Web Site: http://www.foobar2000.org/

7Stacks -- Taskbar Stack/Menu

As I find the Windows Start Menu too crowded for easy use, I've been using True Launch Bar and Powerpro on Windows XP to modify the taskbar to start programs the way I like. Unfortunately, the Windows 7 task bar works much differently than in any other version of windows and my old reliables just don't work very well on my new Windows 7 box. After looking around, I found a freeware program that both looks nice and does the basic job I need done, even if it does not have all the bells and whistles I'm used to: 7stacks.

From the 7stacks homepage:

7stacks is an easy to use, free app that lets Windows 7 (and Vista and XP) users have "stacks" of icons in their Taskbar (in 7) or QuickLaunch Toolbar (in Vista and XP). By using stacks, users can reduce icon clutter, and combine a group of related icons into a single icon. For instance, if you use application suites such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, or Adobe CS4, you can have all the suite's icons combined into one icon!

You can also use it to browse and access documents within a folder very quickly. Usually, when you want to edit a series of frequently used documents, you'd have to either launch the app, and go to File|Open, or open the (My) Computer icon and go into your (My) Documents folder and pick the file you want. With 7stacks, just create a stack to that document's folder, and open that document in a couple of clicks.

7stacks was created because of my own frustrations with Windows 7, as great an OS as Win7 is. Because Windows 7's new taskbar, called the SuperBar is very similar to the Mac OS X Dock, many comparisons are going to be made. But Windows 7 seemed to have one glaring omission of OSX: stacks. Now, with 7stacks, you get almost the same functionality as the OS X stacks, but with a more "Windows 7" appearance.

7stacks is incredibly easy to use, and has a variety of looks and features, allowing anyone to customize the look of their stack however they'd like. And using Windows 7, its easy to create new stacks by right-clicking on any stack, and selecting "Create New Stack" in the JumpList. 7stacks will place an shortcut icon on your desktop to this new stack, which you can then pin to your Windows 7 taskbar, or Vista or XP QuickLaunch bar.

7stacks can use subfolders as nested menus so that when you click on a folder in the menu, the items in the subfolder appear in 7stacks under the folder name. 7stacks has allowed me to create my own "start" menu with just the programs I want organized the way I want them -- in a package that looks like it is native to Windows 7. While 7stacks isn't perfect, it will does the minimum I need and does it well.

Rating: 4.0
Operating System: Windows 7, Vista or XP
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version Tested: 1.5 beta 1
Web Site: http://www.alastria.com/index.php?p=software-7s

A New Computer and Windows 7

My 2002 era XP machine died last week: the motherboard failed after years of 12-18 hour a day use. I decided not to replace the motherboard as even new P4 motherboards do not provide much support for "ancient" technology like IDE drives, AGP 4x video cards, etc. -- buying a new motherboard would mean replacing most of my peripherals as well. I finally decided to go with an Emachines ET1331G-03w. While I normally would not consider an Emachines box, our post-cancer-without-insurance financial condition meant I needed to spend very little money but get a lot of bang for it. Except in the gamer 3-D graphics department, this box has a lot of bang for the money.

I bought one Sunday and am still in "set up all my standard software mode" -- and probably will be for a while. So far I find Windows 7 very nice -- probably even better than XP. However, going with a new OS and a 64 bit version of that OS means I've had to find a free 64 bit antivirus program and firewall fairly quickly as I wanted Norton off my system posthaste. The new free 5.0 version of AVAST has a 64 bit version, so that was a no brainer. I like AVAST and the new version is very nice. For a firewall, I'm currently trying Comodo's free firewall. It does very well in security reports, but is is incredibly annoying with permissions pop-ups, especially for programs running other programs. Trying to install and run Cygwin was a lot of fun with the Comodo Firewall, for example. Hundreds of BASH command line utility programs had to be approved to run. And they will need to be approved to run again if I install zshell and try to run them from it or if they are run from another program. Sigh. Security is good, but there can be too much of a good thing. So I may not be staying with Comodo Firewall.

One thing this new system will certainly do is bring this blog back to life, as I find, try, and report on all sorts of new free software for Windows 7. Watch for them.

CheckPlaces -- Check for Bad Bookmarks from Firefox

If you are like me, you have a huge collection of bookmarks in Firefox. I have some that I bookmarked years ago. I really need to go through my 1500+ bookmarks, look at each one, and decide if I still need it. However, I know this is something I will probably never have time to do. With CheckPlaces, I can at least let Firefox check each bookmark to be sure the web site still exists. While there are programs that do this (including some commercial ones that cost far more than the task is worth), it is nice to be able to do this within Firefox.

CheckPlaces is easy to use. You can let it check all your bookmarks or just select specific folders for bookmarks you wish to check. The first time I used CheckPlaces I had it check all 1500+ bookmarks. This only took about 6 minutes on my 6 meg cable connection. It was very fast. Unfortunately, it returned far too many errors for easy decision-making. I allowed it to delete all the bookmarks with DNS errors (server no longer exists), but decided I would go folder-by-folder on the other errors so I could view the error for each bookmark and decide what to do. Checking a folder usually only took a few seconds and returned a much shorter list of errors, making it easy to check each page listed with and error and decide what to do with the bookmark.

Sadly, this process only reduced the size of my bookmark list by a couple of hundred. I still really need to make the time to go through the list by hand and eliminate those I will never use again. CheckPlaces, however, did what it was supposed to do in a very efficient manner and running it once a month of so will at least remove dead sites from my bookmarks.

Rating: 4.0
Operating System: Any Firefox
License: Open Source
Price: Free
Version: 1.62
Web Site: http://www.andyhalford.com/checkplaces/

Trim Space -- An Add-In for Microsoft Excel

While extra spaces usually aren't a problem when you are entering data by hand in Microsoft Excel, they often worm their way into data that import from other formats. Once in your spreadsheet they can be hard to find and they will often foul up your spreadsheet to the point it doesn't print -- or even work -- correctly. Manually finding these extra spaces at the beginning and/or end of items is a time-consuming and error-prone process.

Fortunately, the free Trim Spaces addin for Microsoft Excel can remove them in three easy steps: select the cells you need checked, use the Excel menu or toolbar to activate the Trim Spaces add-in, and press the run button in the Trim Spaces dialog box. Trim Spaces will do its thing in a flash, removing all leading and trailing spaces from the selected cells in your spreadsheet. If you work with Execl and imported data a lot, this little add-in can save you a long of hair-pulling.

Rating: 5.0
Operating System: Windows with Microsoft Excel 2007, 2003, 2002 (XP) or 2000
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version: 1.3
Web Site: http://www.ablebits.com/excel-trim-spaces/index.php

PDFCreator -- Print a PDF from Any Windows Program

PDF files have become a standard way to send formatted documents that you do not want the recipient to be able to change. Unfortunately, the Adobe Acrobat, the commercial software designed to create PDF files is priced for businesses and individuals who have money to burn. Acrobat also has many features that post people will never use. Fortunately, there are many programs, including a good select of free programs, that will create PDF files without Acrobat. PDFCreator is one of the best of the free PDF creation programs.

PDFCreator is easy to us. You just select it as your printer in any Windows program that allows you to print and your document is converted to a PDF file and saved on your hard drive. PDFCreator has the following features:

* Create PDFs from any program that is able to print
* Security: Encrypt PDFs and protect them from being opened, printed etc
* New: Digitally sign your PDFs to ensure that you are the author and the file has not been modified
* New: Create PDF/A files for long term archives
* Send generated files via eMail
* Create more than just PDFs: PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, EPS
* AutoSave files to folders and filenames based on Tags like Username, Computername, Date, Time etc.
* Merge multiple files into one PDF
* Easy Install: Just say what you want and everything is installed
* Terminal Server: PDFCreator also runs on Terminal Servers without problems

PDFCreator is open source, released under the GNU General Public License. For most users, it will handle all the PDF creation tasks needed without the expense or complexity of Adobe Acrobat.

Rating: 4.5
Operating System: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
License: GNU GPL
Price: Free
Version: 0.9.8
Web Site: http://en.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator

FeedDemon -- Google Reader Friendly RSS Reader for Windows

Google Reader is probably the most popular RSS Feed Reader around. It allows you to follow RSS news feeds from your favorite web site in one place. And you can access Google Reader from any computer. Some people, however, prefer to use a RSS Reader program on their computer as these programs generally provide features that online RSS Readers -- like Google Reader -- do not.

The free FeedDemon client allows you to combine the best of both worlds. You can have the power of an RSS Reader program that runs on your computer and still use Google Reader when you need to, only seeing new items ion both locations. This is possible because Feed Demon 3.0 will sync with Good Reader. This even allows you to use FeedDemon at home and at work and keep the two copies of FeedDemon in sync so you need have to wade through the same "new" items again.

The major features of FeedDemon 3.0 are:

* Google Reader synchronization: Use FeedDemon at home, at your office, or anywhere you go and keep your feeds, tags and shared items synched between locations.
* Sharing: FeedDemon?s simple single-click sharing lets your friends subscribe to a feed of your favorite articles.
* Tagging: Assign your own keywords to items, making it easy to classify and locate articles you've previously read.
* Watches: Tell FeedDemon to let you know when your keywords appear in any feed you?re subscribed to.
* Search Feed: Get alerted when your keywords appear in any feed, regardless of whether you?re subscribed to it.
* Podcasts: Let FeedDemon automatically download audio files and copy them to your iPod or other media device.

FeedDemon is formerly commercial product that was released as freeware. It's a nice program, although I personally prefer GreatNews on Windows and Liferea on Linux. Neither of these programs will sync with Google Reader, however.

Rating: 4.0
Operating System: Windows XP or later with IE 7 or later installed
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version Tested: 3.0
Web Site: http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/FeedDemon/Default.aspx

Lacuna Launcher -- Launch Multiple Programs from a Single Shortcut

If you are anything like me, you often need to launch multiple programs to do your work. For example, when I'm working on a web page I need my HTML editor, my browser, my photo editor, my text editor to use as a scratch pad, and I need to start my local web server and database server. It's a bit annoying to have to find each of these programs in my start menu (I don't do the hundreds of icons on my desktop bit) and start it.

Enter the freeware Lacuna Launcher.

Lacuna Launcher allows me to create a text file (in Notepad or any other text editor) listing the programs I want to start, one per line, in the order I want to start them. I then create a shortcut to Lacuna Launcher with the name of the text file I created as an argument. I can click on this "Web Design" shortcut and all my programs open one by one. Of Course, opening a number of large programs at once can slow the computer to a crawl as it tries to access them all on the hard drive at one time. Lacuna Launcher can help prevent this as you can tell it to wait for a number of seconds before starting the next program on the list. A delay as short as one or two seconds can make my system much more responsive when starting a number of large programs.

Lacuna Launcher is a simple program that does what it does quite well -- and adds a very useful feature to Windows.

Rating: 5.0
Operating System: Windows XP, Windows Vista
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version: 1.0.0
Web Site: http://appsapps.info/lacunalauncher.php