Bobcaygeon Promoter, March 22, 2002
NetScoop: Four Favourite Freebies
by Anne Panter
Over many years of using computers I have been watching an on-going game of leap-frog between hardware and software companies. Computer manufactureres make faster processors and bigger hard drives, which the software companies then fill up with bigger, more demanding programs. We upgrade our software to the latest level, then find our computers chugging slowly and our hard drives nearly full, until we are forced to upgrade the hardware again.
While this may be great for the economy, its tough on the individual consumer. And, both as a consumer, and an old-fashioned computer programmer (yes, there are such things), I'm offended by all this "bloated" software, huge programs with a lot of features I don't want, filling up space on my hard drive.
So, it's a treat when I find a small elegant program that does one thing and does it well. In this and my next column, I'd like to share my four favourite such programs: Quick Delete, Rampage, EditPad and Irfanview. These are indispensable, small, and all of them, believe it or not, free.
Why four? I'm a sucker for alliteration. (And I missed a golden opportunity when Fenelon Falls' first female firefighter fractured her femur. Sorry, Suzie.)
I'll start with Quick Delete (*), my handy "spam buster". I received 114 emails this morning. No, I don't have a huge fan club. I'm just on a lot of spam lists. QuickDelete gets just the headers (sender name & subject line) from the server. I highlight those I want to delete (about 100 of them), let Quick Delete remove them from the server, then open my email program (Outlook Express) to download the "keepers". Not only does this save a lot of time, it also reduces the risk of viruses. The "garbage" emails never even reach my computer.
If you have an old level of Microsof Exchange, you don't need Quick Delete. The "remote mail" feature in Exchange did exactly this job. For some reason, when Microsoft replaced Exchange with Outlook Express, it added a host of fancy features, but dropped this one.
Next is Rampage(*), a handy little memory manager. If you have an older computer with limited memory (RAM), you will love Rampage. It runs constantly in the background, monitors the amount of memory available, and frees "lost" memory as needed. I should explain how memory can be lost. (Alzheimers on older computers?). Each running program takes a chunk of memory. If it is written properly, it releases that memory when it closes. If it's badly behaved, or not properly closed, that piece of memory is not released, and the operating system (Windows) cannot use it for another applciation. Also, memory can become fragmented after a lot of programs have been opened and closed. Rampage also keeps an eye on this, and "defragments" (consolidates) those chunks of memory for Windows.
If your computer seems to get slower and slower as the day goes on, it's not getting tired, it's running out of memory. Rampage can stop the leaks.
Quick Delete is available at www.yeti-soft.de, Rampage at www.jfitz.com/software/RAMpage/index.html Both these links are available on the Kawartha Internet Users Group web page at www.bobcaygeon.com.
For more information on this, or any other internet topic, come to the next meeting of the Kawartha Internet Users' Group. We meet on the 2nd Thursday of each month, 7pm, at the Lions' Hall, Main St., Bobcaygeon.
apanter@kawartha.net
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