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Newsletter Archives
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Freeware Spotlight — O&O Lanytix
Posted on May 10th, 2021 at 01:02 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBEST UTILITIES
By Deanna McElveen
When showing up at a new client’s small business, the first thing you need to know is where the heck everything is. Or maybe you just want to take inventory of your home network.
How many routers are there? How many computers? How many people are using the company Wi-Fi for their personal phones? Is your kid using his/her laptop at 3 a.m.? What are the IP addresses and MAC addresses?
Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.17.0 (2021-05-10).
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Freeware Spotlight — Complete Internet Repair 8
Posted on April 26th, 2021 at 01:02 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBEST UTILITIES
By Deanna McElveen
The tools on your flash drive save you time — and the time of your client.
In my former life as an elementary school teacher, I was never opposed to kids using calculators to skip some of the basics and get right to more advanced math skills. Let’s face it, using a calculator to do the easy stuff so you can get a head start on figuring out how to get us to Alpha Centauri is not cheating. Punch in 7 times 8 a few thousand times, and you’re going to learn it.
Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.15.0 (2021-04-26).
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Freeware Spotlight — Killer
Posted on April 12th, 2021 at 01:02 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBest Utilities
By Deanna McElveen
It’s thorough, it’s free, it’s portable, it’s a little dangerous, and it has a knife icon. What’s not to love?
Remember the good old days when Task Manager had just one or two processes showing for each running program? Not 47 of them (looking at you, Google). Remember when you could kill this fella by ending one process?
Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.13.0 (2021-04-12).
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Freeware Spotlight – Distant Desktop
Posted on March 22nd, 2021 at 01:04 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBest Utilities
By Deanna McElveen
It’s unfortunate that I paid for an annual renewal of Team Viewer just before I found Distant Desktop.
I might have made a different decision. This newly discovered remote-control software is totally free for personal and commercial use, AND it has everything I use and love.
Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.11.0 (2021-03-22).
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Freeware Spotlight — DISM_GUI
Posted on March 8th, 2021 at 01:00 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBest Utilities
By Deanna McElveen
It’s the little things that make me happy.
Little electric bills, little chocolates, and little utilities.
DISM_GUI by Dirk Paehl is just that sort of utility. Tiny, but super useful and always on my flash drive. If you like fixing Windows without typing, so you can keep that Slurpee in one hand, this is the tool for you!
Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.9.0 (2021-03-08).
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Freeware Spotlight — FastCopy
Posted on February 22nd, 2021 at 01:00 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBest Utilities
Freeware Spotlight — FastCopyBy Deanna McElveen
When you need that massive amount of data copied and you don’t have all day.
When moving large amounts of data from one location to another, Windows can be a bit of a turtle. Sure, you can spend part of your day doing things like setting Optimize Drives to auto, disabling autotuning, disabling Remote Differential Compression, enabling write caching — or you can just use FastCopy by developer Shirouzu Hiroaki.
Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.7.0 (2021-02-22).
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Freeware Spotlight — Windows Repair Toolbox
Posted on February 8th, 2021 at 01:35 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBest Utilities
Freeware Spotlight — Windows Repair ToolboxBy Deanna McElveen
“Why doesn’t someone put all the best computer repair tools into one portable utility?”
Well, someone did. Alex Canotilho created Windows Repair Toolbox. The program is not new — I believe we added it to our website back in 2015. Alex keeps the program updated, and each version adds or changes something, so you will want to keep checking our site for updates.
Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.5.0 (2021-02-08).
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Freeware Spotlight – Immunet 7
Posted on January 25th, 2021 at 01:20 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBest Utilities
Freeware Spotlight — Immunet 7By Deanna McElveen
Where did the good, free antivirus programs go?
Remember how great the little AVG and Avast Antivirus companies from the Czech Republic once were? Well, they got big — real big — and then they merged back in 2016, as is often the case with small tech companies. Unfortunately, many use their free versions as a loss leader for their paid versions, which sadly means the free versions act like adware, popping up ads to nag users.
Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.3.0 (2021-01-25).
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Freeware spotlight — 3 tiny tech tools for your flash drive
Posted on January 11th, 2021 at 00:15 Comment on the AskWoody Lounge
Best Utilities
Freeware spotlight — 3 tiny tech tools for your flash driveBy Deanna McElveen
Today’s computer service toolbox is less about screwdrivers and wrenches and more about
handy software utilities tucked into a flash drive.Back in the day, I carried a zippered CD holder for all of my tools on service calls . I also had a box of floppy disks, Zip disks, and even SuperDisks (who remembers those?) with tools on them. Today, it’s all about flash drives for computer techs, so I’m going to share a few simple tools to keep on your flash drive — tools that will make your geek life a little easier.
All these tools are click-to-run (aka zero-install), which means all you need to do is run them. This portability is important; without it, they would not be suitable for your flash drive toolbox.
Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.1.0 (2021-01-11).
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Freeware Spotlight — Zer0
Posted on December 20th, 2020 at 21:00 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBEST UTILITIES
By Deanna McElveen
This is a busy time of year, so this review will be quick.
As with many people who work on computers, I am a bit paranoid. By now you know that I own a computer store, and almost every day I hear about laptop thefts from cars, homes, gyms, and so forth. The tales of larceny usually include horror stories about sensitive information that’s now in the hands of the malefactors.
With that in mind, I went looking for a quick and super-simple way to permanently delete specific files on the systems I was repairing/maintaining. Eventually, I discovered that KC Softwares had just what I needed. Zer0 is portable, free, and exceptionally easy to use. Win! Win! Win!
Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.50.0 (2020-12-21).
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Freeware Spotlight — Beeftext
Posted on December 6th, 2020 at 21:10 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBEST UTILITIES
By Deanna McElveen
If you’re like me, you find yourself typing the same bits of text over and over again.
Ideally, you’d have a handy tool to let you quickly paste frequently entered prose.
There are a number of utilities for entering strings of text via keyboard shortcuts (examples). But another spin on that trick really caught my attention. Xavier Michelon’s Beeftext uses text-based keywords rather than keyboard key combinations. Why is a text keyword better? You don’t have to worry about key-combo conflicts with applications.
Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.48.0 (2020-12-07).
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Freeware Spotlight — PingStatus
Posted on November 15th, 2020 at 21:15 Comment on the AskWoody LoungeBEST UTILITIES
By Deanna McElveen
In our neck of the woods, high-speed and reliable Internet connections can be a rare commodity.
It’s not uncommon to report Internet issues to your provider via the phone, only to have a tech show up while everything is running fine.
If this sounds familiar, then Bakidok’s PingStatus is the tool for you.
Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.45.0 (2020-11-16).
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