Really Useful Stuff: WinPatrol

My pick for this week (belatedly) is BillP Studios' WinPatrol.

If you asked me, WinPatrol should be the one piece of software that you absolutely must install on top of Windows and MS Office. What it does: it's a security monitor that notifies you of any changes made to your system. In English: it basically takes a snapshot of your critical system resources and then alerts you of any changes taking place without your knowledge. So if your computer is being manipulated by malware, WinPatrol will halt the action and ask for your approval. If you think the program in question isn't malware, then you can allow the process to continue, and the digital angels are happy once again.














Actually WinPatrol will monitor changes made by any software, malware and wellware alike. It's effectively a kind of firewall that works as a security layer over your operating system, protecting you from unauthorized manipulations by software. However: this is not an antivirus, anti-spyware or anything similar. WinPatrol's job is to block any kind of changes happening without your knowledge, allowing them only when you approve. If your computer is already malware-infected, you have to deal with them first. (Click here for my antivirus reviews; here for my take on other security software.)

Therefore you can't really do without antiviruses and the such. So why use WinPatrol? Simple -- well, prevention is better than cure, right? Moreover, WinPatrol will also:

• detect and review new auto start-up programs
  
• automatically disable recurring startup programs
  
• delay auto start-up programs for quick boot-up
• monitor toolbars and clean up cookies
• detect and view newly created hidden files
• detect and lock changes to file type associations

and much more. And it's free.

WinPatrol is a fairly friendly piece of software -- for the most part, you'll only notice Scotty the Watchdog sitting in your taskbar who'll woof a popup whenever anything happens. However, advanced users are likely to feel more comfortable it, due to all the registry issues that are reflected in the alerts.

BillP Studios does have a paid version ($29.95) though, that provides 24/7 access to the WinPatrol Plus Knowledgebase and real-time infiltration detection. If you're not comfortable or need help about monitoring software-induced changes on your computer, by all means go for the paid version.

For: Super security monitor for your Windows computer (even works on Vista!). Also has a couple of useful privacy features thrown in. Free and weighs less than 1 MB (whoa).
Against: Interface and help features ought to be a bit more geared towards end-users.

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Really Useful Stuff: Acronis True Image

Don't turn away before reading this: this is probably the most underrated and most useful piece of software that could make you happier person. Ever. Okay, you're done, free to go, don't need to know more. Or do you?
















For many years (many years ago) I used to think Acronis True Image had something to do with Adobe Photoshop. Well, let's just say I don't believe ignorance is bliss anymore. True Image basically takes a snapshot of your hard disk or partition (snapshot = image. Got it?). The snapshot, in turn, is a compressed backup of your partition or hard disk which you can uncompress and roll back to. So if you've saved a snapshot, you can always restore it whenever viruses or any sort of muckamuck is making your life miserable. Voila! All problems solved.

Don't worry about document files or your Outlook configuration. You can actually exclude/include folders to restore. And: you don't need to make complete backups all the time, you can make incremental backups; you can clone hard disks; you can schedule backups; you can restore certain files; you can restore from a boot disc; you can even have a secure zone on your computer, and much, much more.

It's also geared at novice to intermediate users. The latest version of True Image (v11) has new privacy tools and virtualization capabilities, and even supports 64-bit PCs. (I actually use a much older version! v8.0. Henceforth: if you do come across older versions of True Image at a bargain price, by all means go for it. Just remember to check whether it supports your operating system, since it might not support Vista if it's too old.)

Of course, operating systems have their own system restore mechanisms, and there are alternatives around like Norton Ghost. But True Image has more features, and performs far better than everyone else in its field. I ought to add that it's wise to stay clear of any product with Norton in its name. Enough said! It's really useful.

Hop off to Acronis to know more or download a trial. The home edition costs $49.99, but you might get it for cheaper online.

For: Provides a diverse range of options to save and restore backups of your drives, certain folders or entire hard disks.
Against: Some people have reportedly suffered from installation issues.

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Really Useful Stuff: Dictionary.com

I know, you're probably surprised and feeling humored. Dictionary.com is so commonplace it can't really be listed as a RUS, right?

I disagree! Sometimes the most commonplace things lose their versatility, because, well, they're so commonplace. That's where this post comes in. Dictionary.com has a couple of very useful stuff under its belt, which haven't enjoyed halfway-near the same popularity as the word definition check-up feature.

There's a Thesaurus, which is actually very good and is perhaps something you've heard of. We're so used to resorting to synonyms our word processors serve us. Not necessarily the right thing to do: lots of similar words have vastly different contextual usages, something your word processor won't tell you.

The site's Encyclopedia will hardly turn up in search engine results, but is very handy. In fact, there are a lot of entries you won't find elsewhere -- even on Wikipedia! If you're studying linguistics, for instance, this is a must-visit for you.

More: Dictionary.com has multilingual dictionaries, widgets, RSS feeds, blogs, toolbars and more! If you're tired of having to go online, grab the toolbar (or even the recommended CleverKeys, which isn't, however, available for Vista). If you think the toolbar is too much, go for the no-nonsense bookmarklet.

To sum up, you've probably frequented Dictionary.com, but do take a closer look. It can help you with your scholarly pursuits (and even help you learn a new language!) with resources that you probably won't find elsewhere. Hop off to Dictionary.com to explore.

For: Very useful definition, synonym and reference lookup features; also has multilingual dictionaries and translators.
Against: Needs to upgrade to Web 2.0; premium content hardly makes sense; we could do with less ads.

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Really Useful Stuff: RAMBooster 2

I'm a multi-tasker -- I like to listen to music, work on a document and surf the internet from my computer at the same time. And I bet you're one too, which makes RAMBooster 2 a worthy candidate for your software arsenal.

RAMBooster frees up stale memory on your computer. Windows isn't the best thing out there at memory reallocation, so RAMBooster frequently ends up working wonders. Once installed, it will run in your system tray; the icon color will change according to your system's RAM consumption, so you know that you need to right-click on it and free up some RAM when the icon turns yellow. You can also schedule RAMBooster to run automatically whenever your system memory drops below a certain level. It's a nice feature, but I'm happy driving with a stick.

From my experience, I didn't really like RAMBooster very much when I first installed it (a previous version). After many bouts of trial and error, I realized that I was trying to free up too much RAM -- more than my system could afford, which got RAMBooster stuttering. Advice: don't do that. Settle for a target level of free RAM that is 30 percent of the RAM you actually have (My Computer>Properties), and you'll find this software genuinely useful.

For: Great software that cleans up unused system memory
Against: Desperately needs a version upgrade. It doesn't support Vista, and the last version came out almost 3 years ago.

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Really Useful Stuff: Diigo

If you ask me, Diigo is the best thing to come out of Web 2.0. It's not a Digg-alike: the name stands for Digest of Internet Information and Other Stuff.

In short, Diigo is a social bookmarking site that comes with an optional toolbar. But: you can highlight content in webpages (the way you can highlight text in Microsoft Word or FrontPage); add comments (as sticky notes); find people who have similar interests as you (who have bookmarked similar webpages), and most importantly, the page you bookmark will be saved to Diigo's archive, so it'll never vanish even if the site returns a 404.

And that isn't even half of Diigo's features. The thing is still in its infancy (the latest is Diigo 3.0 beta), so not many people know about it. All in all, it's a great research tool.

Hop off to Diigo's website to get started or view an introductory video. Here's my Diigo profile.

For: Ground-breaking social bookmarking features
Against: Minor bugs (deleting cookies will reset some preferences to default)

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Really Useful Stuff: RocketDock

Okay, this is the first post in this series. Really Useful Stuff is really hard to find, so expect posts once a week. This week's RUS: RocketDock.Okay, this is the first post in this series. Really Useful Stuff is really hard to find, so expect posts once a week.

Quote:
RocketDock is developed by an Apple fanboy and fangirl on OS X.
Consider it a peace offering from the Mac community to you.
Together we can end OS persecution :)

Now isn't that cute. It's not the single greatest piece of software ever, as its website claims. But RocketDock is really good. It's a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. English: it's a kind of transparent hovering toolbar that makes life easier.

I like a clean desktop (because it gets messy so often! I keep saving files on my desktop), and desktop icons do eat up a bit of your system memory.

But with this thing, you can happily have your desktop icons hanging on a toolbar; you can also have shortcuts to folders, files and webpages. RocketDock claims you can even have small applications running within it, such as a weather widget or a clock.

And of course, it's skinnable, you can dock it anywhere on your desktop, choose to auto-hide it, customize actions, change icons, etc, etc.

Check out the screens: I've customized RocketDock with mostly default icons, so it's not as pretty as it could be. On my desktop, icons on RocketDock balloon when I hover on them. Check out RocketDock's website here for a video demonstration. Here's the download page.

For: Really simple and useful, looks nice too. Hundreds of community resources (skins, wallpapers, icons) available. Latest version includes taskbar support, which makes minimized windows appear as icons on your dock.

Against: Deleting icons from your dock deserved a confirmation pop-up.

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