Freeware Series-2

This time I’d like to move from office to entertainment. This is another set of software present on any PC in the world. Collecting, sorting, viewing/listening to, editing of pictures, music and video is what this is all for. Well, the minimum requirements include watching pics, video and listening to music (either on a CD or stored on a computer).

The default media player for Windows OS users is Windows Media Player, now in it 11th version. I’ve used the 10th for three years and was quite content until I reinstalled Windows and decided to give the 11th a try. I should say it has a nice interface (not that the 10th didn’t) and can still be minimised to the system tray with all the necessary controls there (this is actually the feature that makes me use Windows MP over any other media player). But unlike ASUS Power DVD player, WMP doesn’t let you choose whether to play a DVD from the beginning or from the point you stopped watching it last time this DVD was in your DVD-drive. This was a very convenient feature in ASUS Power DVD Player (which I got for free bundled with some hardware, used without any problem for three years but had to uninstall due to some problems recently). Back to WMP. It allows you to listen to CDs, rip them, sort your media collection and download CD info from the Internet. But that is possible with a few other media players which are also available for free. The only difference is that before you can install WMP your Windows will be validated. In case you don’t have an Internet connection or have a pirate version, the installation of WMP won’t start.

There are other media players over there, some of which are as free as Windows Media Player, only they do not require any validation. I tried JetAudio Basic (the full version is unfortunately not free) and Quintessential Player. All of them could be found on any freeware collection site, like Freeware Files or File Hippo. But I didn’t quite like them. Unlike WMP they don’t have the ability to be minimised to the system tray with the major control buttons there. JetAudio, instead, can be minimised to a strip of controls as wide as your monitor, sort of a second system tray, which is nice-looking and functionally rich, but doesn’t save any vertical space on your monitor at all. But JetAudio has at least a nice standard interface. Quintessential Player has an ugly standard interface, though more nicer ones can be downloaded from the site. Both JetAudio and Quintessential Player allow you to watch DVDs, but unlike ASUS Power DVD Player, or (though differently) Windows Media Player, they freeze when you try to rewind or fast forward the movies using the tiny vertical bar (don’t know the name for it) under the screen moving with the progress of the film.

One more player comes with K-Lite Codec Pack or can be downloaded separately. It is Media Player Classic. This has a very simplistic interface a-la older versions of WMP, but the functionality is totally up-to-date, with lots of formats supported and DVD playback without the need for any separate DVD codecs (like WMP sometimes requires). But again, it would freeze when I try to move the little bar fast forwarding the movie. So, I use it only for playing rare (to me) files, like .ogg. Well, you can play those with WMP oк other players. If they don’t support some types of files initially, all you need is a codec pack.

I personally use K-Lite Mega Codec Pack. K-Lite comes in several versions, from basic to full. But Mega version includes it all (though you are free to install only what you need, or think you need, at the installation). Mega Pack even includes Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative (available separately as well), so that you can play Real Media files and QuickTime media files without the need to install Real Player and QuickTime Player (they are both free but use lots of space on your harddrive, plus mess up your start menu with additional players’ icons).

Next time, I’ll tell you about various audio-video utilities and freeware to work with graphic files.

Freeware Series-1

I decided to start writing about numerous freeware programs that I have ever tried to use or am still using on my home computer. The world of freeware is gigantic, but even in this ocean there are sharks and small fish. Not all sharks are great, and not every small fish is small. Most PC users have at least a few free programs installed on their computers; most sharks of freeware are known to the multitude of PC users. So, the following series is just my personal experience.

I’ll start with some preface. My computer (desktop model) is more than three years old, but I haven’t ever upgraded it since the time of purchase, because that was my plan. Before buying a computer I studied special literature and wrote down the parts I wanted to have inside that big thick sheet and heavy tower (chosen specially too) of iWin model. When I was asked what I was going to use my computer for I said, ‘Most probably just as a typewriter and for Internet connection.’ That’s what I’ve been mostly using it in fact, as do most average PC users out there. I am not a gamer and deleted even the games built in Windows OS. I am not a programmer. And I am not a guy who installs absolutely everything just to have it on. Neither am I a guy who strips his computer of everything except the barest necessities.

I have an AMD chipset, ASUS motherboard and videocard, Seagate harddrive (the first one was Maxtor, if I remember it right, but it turned out to be a faulty one and had to be replaced after 6 months), there are several coolers in the tower (front and back of the tower, power cooler, harddrive cooler, chipset cooler and maybe even a videocard cooler). Add to that a Samsung LCD panel, a ZyXel dial-up modem, plus other big gadgets (like HP LaserJet printer and HP scanner) and you are almost done with the hardware. But hardware is not the point of this writing. So, let’s move on to software.

I bought an OEM Windows XP OS to have it installed on my computer. The option was to have a pirate version installed at the store for free. But I opted for a licensed OS to have the major thing proper and a CD always available. More than a year ago I received a free CD from Microsoft with Service Pack 2 (I pre-registered on their site and waited for the Russian Version). I’ve read in some blog that now those CDs are shipped for some fee. Lucky me! Actually there are two things here to be mentioned. Firstly, I don’t think Microsoft should charge for the CD or delay SP 3 release and make users spend tons of traffic on downloading patches. If there is some fault in the product it should be dealt with by the manufacturer at no cost to consumers. At least that’s what consumer laws say in most countries. I’d suppose they should equally apply to Microsoft and its products. Secondly, I understand why most people in my country just go to the so-called ‘book markets’ and buy pirate versions of Windows (or any other software) with all the SPs already in and without downloading anything. And you know, the pirate versions work none the worse that the licensed ones.

Having said that, I still wanted the core software to be ‘clean’. But I had no money left and bought a pirate Office Suite (XP), which I switched later for a pirate Office 2003. It works and I could even download some updates to it through Microsoft site with their genuine validation thingy.

Now comes the saga of freeware. If I started with office programs, let’s consider OpenOffice suite. I tried it, but uninstalled and will eagerly wait for some more time. Well, I didn’t go deep down into the presentation making part, which is said to be still lagging behind Microsoft PowerPoint. I just checked the Writer (which is an equivalent of Word+FrontPage). As a wordprocessor it is OK, only some menu items are not so conveniently available as in Word. But as an HTML editor it made me discard the whole OpenOffice Suite at once: it showed a completely distorted view of the pages I prepared in FrontPage. So, when they change something here I might reconsider OO, which takes less space on my harddrive too. If you cannot wait any longer or need a free office suite right now, you can find it at Open Office Homepage.

Every now and then we need to read PDF documents online or those stored on our computers. Adobe Reader is what most of people have. Foxit Reader is what I have. Its installer is somewhere less than 2MB (compared to 20+MBs of Adobe Reader 7). It takes only 3.7 MBs of space on my harddrive, while AR used to take between 20 and 50 MBs while doing absolutely the same. Foxit Reader opens PDF documents faster than AR and without any opening screens. It gives the same options (as far as I am concerned, and I am concerned only with reading PDF). Well, as Adobe Reader is also free, the thing you gain using Foxit Reader is harddrive space. I know that harddrives are big now, but still why not use the space you can save for more music, videos or…PDF files?

Another operation we quite regularly perform is unzipping the zipped packages (zipping/unzipping is still zipping/unzipping even а the package comes in some other format, rather than .zip). WinZIP and WinRAR, plus maybe 7-Zip are the most popular programs. But the first two are actually shareware (unless you get them at the ‘book market’). IZArc is my choice. Again, it takes just 6.6 MBs of my harddrive space (while WinZIP installer is more than 10 MBs), does absolutely the same job (unzipping packages for me, but can zip if you need it too) with a few dozen formats including .zip, .rar, .7zip, .jar, etc. You will have to look hard to find a format it cannot deal with. And a new version 3.6 comes with nice icons for every format (icons indicate the type of format too, if you want to know what kind of file that is).

Happy New Year

ABBA sang it all in their song that still symbolises new year decades after the song was first performed:

No more champagne
And the fireworks are through
Here we are, me and you
Feeling lost and feeling blue
It’s the end of the party
And the morning seems so grey
So unlike yesterday
Now’s the time for us to say…

Happy new year. Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year. Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don’t we might as well lay down and die
You and I

Sometimes I see
How the brave new world arrives
And I see how it thrives
In the ashes of our lives
Oh yes, man is a fool
And he thinks he’ll be okay
Dragging on, feet of clay
Never knowing he’s astray
Keeps on going anyway…

Happy new year. Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year. Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don’t we might as well lay down and die
You and I

Seems to me now
That the dreams we had before
Are all dead, nothing more
Than confetti on the floor
It’s the end of a decade
In another ten years time
Who can say what we’ll find
What lies waiting down the line
In the end of eighty-nine…

Happy new year. Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year. Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don’t we might as well lay down and die
You and I