Suzy, Drinker Of Coffee

Adventures in pc upgrading

When I was in for the essentials earlier on, I noticed a PC Starter Kit, which claimed to offer 20 essential utilities. I already had Firefox and Acrobat Reader, and I will be going back when I get broadband for a few others. In the meantime, two caught my eye.

Trillian is a multi-use chat client – doing AOL, IRC, IRQ, plus Yahoo & MSN. You can disconnect one at a time, and switch between logins for one client whilst leaving the others unaffected. Once it's downloaded, you download a bit extra for each set - AOL and ICQ are in one for some reason - then it is just five minutes in "connections" to set your users and passwords. Then, you are on - or offline, as the case may be. Colour-coding works for each different client.

Fast Stone Image Viewer has a deceptive name, as it lets you do a lot more than just view… It allows a browser style window, then full-screens your image when you open it.

Also, there were two other products.I had. These did not make the “Starter Kit”, but are well worth a download.

CD Ripper I've had this for a few weeks, and liked it so much I went back to get it again! Basically “does what it says on the tin” – and it’s freeware. Also doubles up as a media player – and you can turn that off if you need to…

PDF ReDirect v2 allows you to print pdf’s. It’s freeware, with lots of good settings – like setting the colours (for litho printing, or for basic home printing), several size settings, and more besides.

32bit Fax I downloaded this to let me fax the doctors my prescription repeat request – and it works! It’s not freeware, but as long as you don’t want to run a news network on it, it will do for you (one modem is more than enough for most people!

posted by Suzy Scott @ 23:52