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Category: Utilities

LogMeIn – Access your PC or MAC from anywhere!

Published by Daniel Westerstal on July 14, 2008

The market for remote desktop software is surging as workers go mobile. Having access to your desktop computer at home or in the office from anywhere in the world is a huge advantage. A service capitalizing on the trend is LogMeIn, which offers a variety of solutions with the basic one completely for free.

LogMeIn is a web-based solution, which means that any computer with a web-browser can be used. Just log on to logmein.com and enter your username and password. Naturally there are some security concerns with having access to your computers online. Luckily LogMeIn has two layers of extra security, which can be applied. The first one is that a randomly generated code that has to be entered when logging in is sent to your e-mail. The other option is having LogMeIn create a sheet of randomly generated codes, which you can print and keep in your wallet.

The free and basic version of LogMeIn offers remote control with the ability to view your desktop. It is also possible sync data in the clipboard with the remote computer. LogMeIn Free is really all you need if you just want access to your desktop PCs from anywhere.

Another neat feature with LogMeIn Free is the ability to have several computers in the same account. Say for example that you want your two desktop PCs as well as a friend who constantly runs in to computer problems in the same account; it is possible with LogMeIn Free.

LogMeIn Pro, which is not free, offers extras such as the ability to drag and drop files between the connected computers, remote printing, file sync and drive mapping among other things. The Pro-version is $19.95 per month per computer, which might work for small businesses but is on the expensive side for an enthusiast with many computers.

The real problem with LogMeIn is the fact that the software only works on Windows machines (XP and Vista) and MACs. There is currently no Linux-version available.

LogMeIn Free is surprisingly fast and powerful, it does not need much configuration and setup. If you just want basic access to your computer from anywhere, LogMeIn Free is a great product.

CD Burner XP

Published by Daniel Westerstal on April 12, 2008

Finding a good free application to burn CDs is not easy these days. There are a bunch of different choices and many of them are quite shaky or no good at all. One program that never fails is CD-Burner XP though.

The program has a number of features found in commercial packages such as the ability to burn and create ISO-images, burn bootable discs, creating audio CDs with or without gaps between the songs and much more.

CD-Burner XP has a pretty neat interface it resembles Nero some, it isn’t a direct copy though and still does its own thing. The program asks you when it starts if you want to create a data-CD or an audio CD, after that it’s a matter of selecting which files and folders to burn. Burning DVDs can also be done using CD-Burner XP, and is done the same-way as ordinary CDs.

There is however a hitch with CD-Burner XP, and that is that your cd-drive has to be compatible with the software, most common drives are though. CD-Burner XP is not open source, but still free. According the developers there are licensed code in the third party libraries the software is using. Nevertheless CD-Burner XP is a great piece of software that works with Windows XP and Vista.

Undelete PLUS

Published by Daniel Westerstal on January 22, 2008

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Every computer user has probably deleted a document and days later discovering that it was needed. There are several undelete applications on the market, but few are free and as uncomplicated as Undelete Plus.

According to the developers the program takes advantage of that Windows actually doesn’t delete a file until it really needs the occupied space for something. Undelete Plus lists recently deleted files after a scan of the hard drive and displays the recoverability of them. The scan is actually quite fast compared to other similar programs; it only took about six minutes to scan a 500 GB hard drive. There is filtering available, which means that you can filter out file-types and files that you don’t want in the scan.

We did some tests by “accidently” deleting an important word document, Undelete Plus managed to recover it fast and efficiently. Undelete Plus does have some limitations; larger files are harder to recover than smaller ones (since it’s a higher possibility that Windows overwrites a larger file). The program frequently displays files as having a “very good” rate of recoverability but when Undelete Plus tries to recover them it fails.

FileZilla

Published by Daniel Westerstal on January 18, 2008

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FTP-programs aren’t exactly a big turn-on. There are a number of them out there on the market, all doing the same thing, managing/uploading and downloading files from FTP-servers. If you are looking for a good and free FTP-program FileZilla might be what you are after.

The interface in FileZilla is pretty much like in any other major FTP-programs, there are two columns; one for your local drive and one for the outside server. Moving files is just a matter of drag and drop. It is possible to customize the different file-views, for example you can select if file-size should be displayed or not among other things. The program can remember your column width preferences if you set it do so, which is neat.

FileZilla is packed with features, it supports FTP over SSL and SSH. It runs fine on Windows, Linux and MAC OS X. What’s even more impressing is the GSS-support, which means that it’s possible to send encrypted traffic from a client to a FTP-server. However it requires that Kerberos (a network authentication protocol) is installed on the client computer and that the server supports it.

In order to keep order of all your FTP-servers there is something called Site Manager. Except for a list of FTP-servers it’s also possible to choose the default directory of each server listed. If you are adding a new server don’t forget to click “Save and Exit”, otherwise your settings will be lost the next time you use the program. This is actually any annoying problem and is one of the things I really have against FileZilla.

FileZilla is one of the best FTP-programs out there, and it’s free. It caters to both basic users and corporations, in fact many large corporations use FileZilla as their default FTP-program.

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