David's Links: PC Offers

PC Offers

This category is intended to include all sorts of PC related products, including hardware, software,
services and education.

Google was a pioneer when it established its clutter-free front page with just a colorful logo and a simple search box. That appeals to me, but others may feel it is a bit too bland. If that describes you, Google lets you customize its front page to your heart's content at iGoogle. Choose from a lengthy menu of useful, interesting add-ons including “of the day” items such as joke, how to, quotes, National Geographic photo, even bible verse. (Kim Komando)

Many of us can’t resist a freebee especially when it’s free software. You can try your luck at Give Away of the Day, where a program is offered for download each day. Each is rated by users. (SNUG OK)

The newer digital cameras take photos that can produce huge files that are much too large to send by email, because they take far too long to transmit and download. It’s best to compress them to a smaller size before sending, and this can be easily done using Fotosizer which makes it an easy three-step process. Compress a batch of photos at the same time, if you like, or you can use a preset list of sizes including iPod, iPhone, and Sony PSP screen sizes. (SNUG OK)

So many of my students sheepishly admit they do not do regular backups of their important files. Why? It’s mostly because they don’t really understand backups, or it’s too much trouble. To avoid this situation, you can use one of the “automatic” online backup services, such as mozyhome or box. They offer 2 GB or 1GB respectively of free storage, more if you pay a monthly fee. You download a program that takes a long time to upload your files. After that, it runs in the background and monitors your file activity, automatically backing up any changes. (CNet reviews)

Microsoft is making a direct appeal to the home PC user market with its recently released Equipt bundle of software. Currently sold only through Circuit City stores (August 2008), this $70 package looks like a bargain. It consists of the full productivity suite known as Office Home and Student 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote) plus for good measure the Live OneCare security suite (antivirus, antispyware and firewall) and a collection of performance utilities. (Smart Computing)

There are two reasons for visiting HDRWalls.com, one being that these images can easily be downloaded to form wallpaper. The other is that HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. “These HDR images are created by taking multiple shots exposed for the highlights, mid-tones and shadows separately and then merged into a single image. This process results in incredibly vivid images. These high quality photos are the only kind that you will find at HDRwalls.com.” (Kim Komando)

If you are using those neat little flash drives, have you considered that it is easy to leave one behind or lose one? Can you afford to have your data fall into the wrong hands? There’s a powerful open source (free) program called TrueCrypt that will take care of that problem for you. You can use it to encrypt sensitive data on your hard drive, too. “Encryption is automatic, real time (on-the-fly) and transparent.” (Kim Komando)

Here’s a pretty cool idea to vary the background of your desktop using your own or other pictures. John’s Background Switcher periodically changes the background image on your desktop (like every hour or every day) to something interesting. You can choose from My Pictures or from anywhere on the Internet and the program is free. (Kim Komando)

“Amazing Offer! Buy SpeedUpMyPC 3 before April 23 at our special download price of $29.95 and we will give you the award winning System Tweaker Absolutely Free.” I have removed all the bold style, capital letters, etc. from that quote and I did install it and had it scan my PC. It claims to have found many so-called problems, some of which may be real. If you purchase it and let it do its thing and have good results, let me know as I have NOT purchased this software. (David Henry)

Another great application has put up a Web version of itself – albeit somewhat simplified for sure. Adobe Photoshop Express is a free version of the classic Photoshop program that allows the average point-and-shooter to upload his or her shots, clean them up, and email or store them online for sharing with friends – up to two GB worth! (Kim Komando)

If you have some precious family memories, or other valuable videos on VHS tape, remember those tapes are vulnerable to degradation. You may want to consider transferring them to DVD. So, take a trip to Bob Rankin’s step-by-step instructions on his Convert VHS to DVD page. The bottom of Bob’s home page also offers you links to various other articles including Free HDTV on your PC and Using Your TV as a Computer Monitor (Tourbus)

It’s exciting when you get a new computer and eventually manage to get it working--except for all those unwanted ads. Looking in the archive I recall listing Dell Crapology a while ago that removes ads from new Dell machines. Now you can get the free PC Decrapifier that applies to all makes and brands of PC. It takes out all the ads cluttering up your brand new computer's desktop. (Kim Komando)

Have you ever watched a PowerPoint presentation and admired the ease with which the presenter gets his message across, perhaps because a picture is worth a thousand words? Maybe you wished you could create one for your club or social group; but PowerPoint is part of the Microsoft Office suite that retails for several hundred dollars. Now you can use Preezo to make your own for free – it’s a similar product, but web-based. Let your creative juices flow! (Kim Komando)

“Jott is a cool new service that will convert your voice into an email or a text message. Just call a toll-free number from your cell phone, and leave a voice message. Jott will translate your spoken words into text, and then forward the text to an email address or send a text message to a cell phone.” For a fuller description of this great new free service and some of its other possibilities, just visit Ask Bob Rankin. It’s in beta Nov. 2007. (Bob Rankin)

Not everybody has a fax machine, but not all is lost on those occasions when you are asked to send a fax —you can call up Fax Zero instead. It’s a free web-based faxing service that also puts an ad on the first page sent. You can either type in your message or attach a file of the document to be transferred. It’s secure and it works! (David Henry)

What a neat idea for those of us who find it tough to get our digital images looking their best! That typically requires working on each one with an editing program like PhotoShop requiring a certain level of skill and dedication. You are unwilling to devote the time and effort? Then try Photobot (under $30, with a free ten day trial) that does much of the job for you; it will “brighten dark pictures, reduce red-eye and give every picture vibrant, lifelike color.” It actually searches your computer for photos and fixes each one automatically. (Smart Computing)

As more and more people find themselves needing introductory materials that deal with all aspects of computer operation and the like, it's good to know that there are a number of websites that provide a nice range of basic tutorials in such matters. The folks at Learnthat have created just such a resource, which includes basic tutorials for Microsoft Windows, XHTML, and on how to design a web page using Word. While the site itself doesn't contain a search engine, visitors can just scroll down the homepage to locate any tutorials that might be of interest. (Ara Rogers)

There’s plenty of confusion around when it comes to digital picture sizes. Resolution, pixels, file size, and output to print or display screen all come into the equation. As far as the resizing part of the problem is concerned, help is at hand at Resizr for easily adjusting image sizes. It lets you resize one simply by dragging a slider anywhere between Small and Big--that’s it. (Kim Komando)

Checking your email can be tough when you're traveling. But Email to Go makes things a little easier. Enter your email address and password, and you have instant access to your Inbox. You don't need to register to check your email, but registration does have its benefits. You can create your own personal page, where you can store favorite links, email addresses, and account names (but no passwords). But maybe you prefer instant messaging (IM) to email-mail. Well, Email to Go does that, too! It's compatible with many different IM services. Just remember to guard your passwords carefully if you're using a public computer because public records are, well, open to the public. (Roger Preslar)

Do you have a Microsoft Word problem that is tying you (and your stomach) in knots? Are you about to throw your shoe through your monitor because you can't get Word to act properly? No need to head to the local book store and spend $30 or $40 for a manual. Better you visit Word Tips. This site is completely independent of Microsoft and is run by a fellow named Allen Wyatt. It contains over 1600 tips and tricks on how to use Word better, faster, and more easily. Information here covers many different versions of Word from Word 6 to Word 2003. You can sign up to receive a weekly E-mail sent every Saturday with three or four Tips of the Week. This site and the weekly letter are entirely free. (Pat Durkin)

Should you have difficulties using a computer mouse because you can't hold it steadily enough, you owe it to yourself to take a look at the Assistive Mouse Adapter. Developed by an IBM researcher for those suffering from Essential Tremor, it may also be helpful for Parkinson's Disease sufferers. It plugs in between your mouse and the PC and smoothes out shakes in a controllable way; plus it helps with the double-click operation. It's made in the UK and is available in the US for about $120 including S&H. (AARP)

The Open Source movement believes that software should be free, so hundreds of volunteer programmers around the world combine to create numerous software products of professional caliber. One of its greatest successes is the Open Office.org or OOo. It is a suite of programs compatible with Microsoft Office, and it can be downloaded from the OOo website for free. If you have doubts about the OOo product, take a look at the testimonials page at the OOo website of the same name--you'll be impressed! Of the thousands of Open Source programs now available, two are more or less well known in the public arena: the Linux operating system and the Mozilla FireFox browser. It's refreshing to learn about alternatives to the mighty Microsoft. (David Henry)

For years, I have been recommending the book The Secret Guide to Computers to my SeniorNet students but only now have I come across its website. It promotes "the world's top-rated computer book", but in such an appealing way that I've no hesitation in including it among the few commercial sites that can be found in David's Links. It's in its 28th edition, which speaks for itself. You can also get free phone advice on your computer problem from the author, Russ Walter, any time day or night; it works, I know, I've tried it. (David Henry)

Wired is one of the granddaddy e-zines for computer buffs and ordinary folk. Essentially a set of online magazines, it offers news and analysis of the IT industry, with sub areas devoted to the culture, business and politics of technology. Wired print magazine lead stories are here as well as sneak previews of forthcoming ones. The last section offers page after page of animations expressing the ups and downs of IT life, submitted by specialist artists. Worth your time. (David Henry)

Here's a website that is dedicated solely to promoting what it claims is the world's best computer newsletter. It is called TNPCnewsletter.com, it's free and is sent to you every second week by Al, Dan and Lee down in Texas. Containing very practical down-to-earth advice on topics like DVD-burning, and really organizing your photos, this letter seems aimed at end users like you and me. (Tourbus)

Everybody likes to get stuff for free, right? The only snag with Free After Rebate is stated clearly in its title; you pay up front and get your rebate--eventually. There are various computer accessories, software, hardware and electronic gadgets listed here, but the best bargains appear to be free telephones. Usually there is a shipping and/or handling fee. (Tourbus)

SnapFish won the 2003 Webby award for Rising Star and is a site that exploits the huge explosion in digital photography with a number of useful offers. You can store an unlimited number of digital images online, download free PhotoWizard software and share your photos with online family and friends anywhere in the world. SnapFish also will process your film photos. (Webby)

One of the great features of the computer world these days is the open software movement. Thousands of programmers collaborate to develop sophisticated software for the public domain, meaning it's absolutely free to end users. One such product that's had great success is Linux; now here comes Open Office, that appears functionally similar to three of Microsoft's Office products (word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software) and its files are interchangeable with them. (Rose City Software)

If you've ever struggled with a great photo image that just happens to be too large, it's easy to make it just the size you want using the versatile photo editor you can find and install at www.irfanview.com Then follow the simple seven step tutorial at www.somewhere-in-time.net/tutorial/irfanview and voila! your picture is just the right size for e-mailing. Simple instructions for cropping a picture are also included. (Neat Net Tricks)

Major advances have recently been made in text-to-speech technology, notably by AT&T labs. You can now enjoy this capability in a new, convenient format at Read Please. Try the demo that compares the new synthesized voices with older, stiff computer voices. If you like it, download the free home version of Read Please 2003, and I think you'll be pleased at how much better it sounds. You can put any text on the clipboard and paste it into Read Please and hear it read by male or female voices. You can also have it read back to you in any of six different languages. (David Henry)

Microsoft found out that 80% of PC Users only use e-mail, surfing and word processing (it sounds like me!). So they put out articles, demos and video clips that can certainly teach us a thing or two about digital media at Do Amazing Things with Windows XP. There are three enticing areas here: Music and Videos with Windows Media Player; Home Movies with Windows Movie Maker; and Digital Photography with Windows XP. (St. Petersburg Times)

Are you still backing up your precious data files to floppy disks? (You are backing them up, aren't you?) You say you don't have a zip drive or a CD burner to do a better job? Well, there are several pretty neat solutions at hand these days, variously called Pen Drive, ThumbDrive, Disk on Key, Mobile Drive and others. The size of your thumb, they are hot pluggable directly into a USB port and appear to Windows as just another drive, in capacities from 8 MB to a whopping 1 GB. No more excuses! Check them out and compare prices for instance at Shop4Tech. (Smart Computing)

The idea of switching to a new ISP and hence a new e-mail address fills me with trepidation. Am I going to lose messages that are "in flight" after discontinuing the old service? I can now take care of that problem presto! by signing up with a neat service called SwitchEmail that is a free e-mail forwarding service. Another useful feature on the site is a comparison of the major ISPs, listing their charges, any special offers, number of e-mail IDs per account, instant messenger capability, web space and availability of live support. (Neat Net Tricks)

If you would like to take computer (and other) courses, but don't want to drive, park and pay course fees, there are some perfectly good free courses to be found on the Internet. Like regular courses they start on a specific date and proceed through several weekly lessons, but you receive them by e-mail. For instance, at the Hewlett Packard Learning Center, I noted courses such as Guide to Practical Desktop Publishing, Adobe Photoshop Basics, Desktop Storage Solutions and Scanning Basics. (Jenny Lind Olin)

"AllExperts is the oldest & largest free Q&A service on the Internet". It's set up like a directory where you first drill down until you find the category you want, say TV & Radio / British TV / Monty Python. The next click brings you the names of one or more reviewers who explain what their expertise is, and then you pop a question to them online. It's answered by e-mail, so neither questions nor answers appear on the site. Experts are rated by users, and you can volunteer your expertise, too. (Smart Computing)

You can use a PC as a fax machine; the trouble is that it's fiddly to set it up and you have to leave it running to receive a fax. You can now receive faxes via e-mail instead, courtesy of the free e-fax service. Similarly, to transmit faxes without a fax machine you can use a modem and your PC's fax software; but if that is too complicated, you can use the Faxaway service instead. They have a free trial and "reasonable rates" after that. You can also send and receive faxes at Fax4Free, which claims to be pretty easy to use. The offer includes free voicemail and both incoming faxes and voicemail are delivered to your e-mail inbox.

There are folks out there who swear Eudora is the best e-mail program there is. Well, now you can download the freeware version from the Eudora site and try it out.

There is a series of Internet Tutorials from Berkeley with lots of how to's and good advice, especially on searching. Then there's AARP's Basic Web and Intermediate Web tutorials, accessed from the links on the left. Recommended for novices and others. There's also a fine chance to brush up your Internet skills at About.com's Net 101 tutorials. You can have the series of lessons e-mailed to you, or take them directly online. The six lessons are E-mail, Browsing, Searching, Chatting, Downloading and Shopping. (Everett Richards)

There's a lot of enthusiastic self promotion on the front page of the Newbie Club, but don't give up too quickly. Once you join the club (free) by supplying your first name and e-mail address, there really are some helpful materials inside. You'll find step by step illustrated tutorials on beginner and intermediate PC tasks, such as Downloading, and E-mail courses and Windows Tutorials such as Backup, Organizing files, and Why your PC is slowing down. (Neat Net Tricks)

There's lots of "free" software available at Free CD Software. Of course it's not exactly free, as they charge you $7.50 S&H per software shipped; furthermore they all appear to be back releases. However, it may still be worth it. (Tour Bus)

Windows Explorer gives you all the information about the files on your hard drive, but it's not easy to use it to determine those that are space hogs. That's where Sequoia View comes in. Install this freeware program and you'll have a visual representation of your hard drive where huge files and folders stand out and are immediately obvious. You'll soon get the hang of it. (Neat Net Tricks)

Here is a nice newsletter for the PC amateurs among us, filled with useful ideas and tips and eminently readable. Cyber News is published monthly by Gary Stanley, cousin of one of our Tampa SeniorNet members. (John Hallgren).

There's lots of good stuff on the Microsoft site. The latest pages I came across contain their comprehensive lists of keyboard shortcuts. Products included are Windows 98 and 2000, Word 97 and 2000 and Internet Explorer 4 and 5, among others. You can become a more proficient PC user by learning and using some of these.

If you are seriously interested in increasing your knowledge about computers, go to the Shelly Cashman website, constructed to accompany the course “Discovering Computers 2001”. Without buying the textbook you can learn a great deal by perusing this site that comprises fourteen chapters. Chapter one starts with basic explanations of what is a computer. Later chapters get into software, hardware, internet and much more. While not all of the textbook information is available online, there are links to other web sites that fill in most of the information about the subject matter. This site is for the serious seeker of technical knowledge. (Joe Barnes)

If you like to check out the facts, read reviews and compare features and prices before you buy any computer related product, you can do all this at the computers.com site, which aims to answer What to buy? and Where to buy it?

I've finally found articles on computer topics written for seniors by a senior who is a writer not a computer nerd; go to AARP's Computers and Technology page and read Sandy Berger's How To Guides. If you prefer audio-visual learning, download a plug-in from PC Show and Tell and you then have a patient computer tutor at your fingertips. Want to know how to perform a certain action in a major software program? Chances are you can now get a comforting voice to guide you through it, accompanied by animated illustrations of the screens involved. This is really user-friendly and - so far - it is ad free. (8/01): It now requires a paid subscription, but with a free 24 hour trial. With 40,000 tutorials, you're bound to find what you need.

Take some time to learn how to use the home page of whatis.com and you'll find it a rewarding way of learning about computers and computer terms. Plus it's a more general reference source, with extensive categories on Acronyms, Area Codes, Books Online, Clip Art, Country codes, Email addresses, Maps, "One Look", Phone numbers, Reference Shelf, Zip Codes and many other information categories.

Are you fed up with the standard Microsoft screensavers? You can choose from thousands at FreeSavers.com including simple photos, slide shows, animations, 3D and multimedia screensavers. (P.-A Warstler)

How about a screensaver slideshow of twenty gorgeous photos of beautiful Super, Natural British Columbia? You can download them from this site and they will install themselves in your screensaver folder.

There is a highly recommended free graphics viewer / editor for Win 95/98 which you can download from IrfanView. The program supports over 40 graphics file types. (Update 2005: This is still a great resource for anyone seriously into graphics)

Would you like to try AIM? That is AOL's Instant Messenger now available as a free download. AIM lets you have instant messaging with Internet friends, even if you and/or they aren't members of AOL. You can even try it out without a download by clicking AIM Express on the left.

You've heard about the latest MP3 file format, which are sound files that you can play at near-CD quality. You can get a copy of the player at WinAmp for a two week free trail; after that its $10. (Update 2005: The player is now free, the music files you pay for. Some music files are free.)

Everybody should have a copy of the Adobe Acrobat Reader that you can download for free from this site. After installation you can use it to view PDF files, the standard format for original documents scanned in with their look and feel intact, such as illustrated books, birth certificates etc.

A venerable local PC organization since 1984 is the Tampa Bay PC Users Group. Read their latest "Bits of Blue" newsletter (in html or Acrobat format) to get a feel for their activities, including meetings held in the computer classroom at MOSI. For a bit of one-upmanship perhaps, there is also the Greater Tampa Bay PC Users Group that meets at the Brandon Campus of HCC.

The latest hugely popular application to hit the Internet is ICQ ("I seek you") developed by four young engineers in Israel. Download and run this freeware program in the background and you can set up instant communications online with friends and colleagues using chat, voice, whiteboard, data conferencing, file exchange and games.