Seeker and Ye Shall Find

Have you ever lost a file or forgotten where you’ve put it on your hard drive? Of course you have, we’ve all done it, and if you’re lucky you may even have found it by searching through folders, or using the Windows Search facility. The one in Vista is actually quite good, but even that won’t be able help you if you can’t remember what the file was called.

Here’s something else to try, it’s called Seeker and in addition to searching for files by all or part of the name, it also looks inside files, for keywords or phrases. Again it’s something Windows can do, but this search tool is fast, very fast in fact, thanks to a powerful algorithm and an unusually flexible range of search criteria. Read More »

Rooting Out Rootkits

We’ve spoken about Rootkits before, they’re nasty little pieces of malware that can open up your PC to hackers, but are also really difficult to detect and eliminate because they hide inside legitimate applications and files. McAfee, the antivirus people have come up with a new Rootkit removal tool, called Rootkit Detective. It’s still in its prerelease beta version but it seems stable enough and compared with other Rootkit removal tools we’ve tried, it’s blindingly fast. Although it didn’t find any infections on our office PCs it did flag up a few files, belonging to uninstalled applications, that shouldn’t be there, so it’s definitely worth a try, especially if you have any concerns about the security of your PC.

New Eee PC from May

As you may know I’m a huge fan of the tiny Linux-based Asus Eee PC and went out and bought one with my own money I hasten to add the minute they were available, last year. It’s been a very happy partnership and this cute little PC has been all over the place with me on numerous press and family jaunts, and it has never let me down. The Wi-Fi always latches on first time, it has all of the applications I need, 3 USB ports, an SD card slot and an MS compatible office suite. A few tweaks here and there, install the KDE desktop and you have a near perfect travelling companion. But now the Eee 900 hoves into view. Read More »

Noisy Word Alternative

You might think that Microsoft Word is the only word processor in town but as regular visitors will know, this is simply not the case and there are some excellent free alternatives, including AbiWord and Open Office Writer, and they’re both Word compatible.

Here’s another one, called Atlantis, and it’s free to try for up to 30 days and it can open, edit and save files in Word’s ‘doc’ format. Read More »

Watching the Old Time Spooks, Watching You…

Following on from last weeks excitement, when the Americans managed to blow up one of their dud spy satellites, you might like to know that the shadowy organisation behind these aerial snoopers has come out of the closet, just a little way…

The NRO or National Reconnaissance Office has its own web site and is publishing some of its satellite imagery. Read More »

ZoHo Online Office

Have you seen the price of a decent office suite? Why bother when you can get everything you want for free, and much more besides. ZoHo is the latest online office suite to hit the headlines and this one really piles it on thick with a very well specified word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, Wiki tool, note taker, groupware mail client, project management program, CRM (Customer Relations Management) software, web conferencing, online database, organiser and chat facility. There’s also a website monitor, viewer and lots more besides and it’s all free.

Tell Word What To Do

Quite literally, this freeware utility, called Natural Word, lets you take command of Word with simple typed commands. For example, rather than hunt around the menus if you want to increase the size of a word or change the colour simply highlight the word or characters and type ‘make 12pt’, or ‘make blue’. There’s no need to memorize the commands, Natural Word will try to understand what you want. Read More »

Office 2008 Zero Bug Backlog

Microsoft is right on track with the development of Office 2008 for Mac, the alternative to the Office 2007 System, but for Apple’s Mac OS X operating system, and not for Windows. Although initially Microsoft planned to deliver the product in the second half of 2007, Office 2008 was postponed to early 2008. However, judging by the latest progress report delivered by Geoff Price, Product Unit Manager for Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit in Redmond, Office 2008 will be released to manufacturing in December and will hit the shelves on January 15, 2008. At this point in time, all teams have confirmed that Office 2008 is on schedule and that it will meet its upcoming deadlines without issues. Read More »