Home Office: New Tools for Home Office Workers

Manipulate PDF files, learn all about Klez, play a killer game of cricket.

Steve Bass

I'm getting tired of getting e-mail messages with the Klez virus. So first I'm going to tell you how to avoid the dang thing. Then I'm going to tell you about a neat utility for sharing critical documents. Finally, I have two cool labelers that save me lots of time and aggravation in my home office.

First, It's the Klez!

Have you received a message from me with the Klez worm yet? You probably will. Fact is, the last one I got was sent from me.

Of course I didn't send it to myself (or to you) and that's what makes the whole Klez worm thing so awfully confusing. Andy Brandt's been following Klez since it first arrived eight months ago. He says, "What makes Klez particularly insidious is that it draws both a new sender and a new recipient from the infected party's sources." You can get a better sense of why you're getting e-mails from me with Klez attached by looking at "Klez's Path of Infection." And make sure you take the time to read Andy's entire article: "Klez: The Virus That Won't Die."

National Upgrade Day

If you really want to do something to get rid of those Klez e-mail messages, check your antivirus program's signature, If it isn't up to date (and for many of you, it probably isn't), it might be a good idea to update it. If nothing else, try a quick scan with either Command on Demand or Housecalls, both available free online.

Dig this: Are these altered photos or just a starling who's trying to get ahead? You decide.

PDF: A Basic Tool

I have loads of documents that I need to send to others. Most are created in Word, Excel, QuickBooks, and Corel Publisher. In the past, I used EFax Messenger Plus, a neat, free tool that saves the document as an image that anyone can read with an EFax viewer. You can read about it in "My Favorite Free Utilities."

While EFax works just fine, Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format files are more common. Not familiar with PDF files? You can read them with the Adobe Acrobat Reader. The problem for me is cost. Adobe Acrobat runs $249 and there's no way I can justify that for a dozen files a month.

One alternative that's probably too specialized for most people is the desktop publishing program Corel Ventura 10; this new version includes a way to generate PDF docs. (I'll have lots more on Ventura in a future issue.) But there are two other tools that do as good a job, if not better.

The first one I recommend is FinePrint pdfFactory. Once installed, it works just like Adobe Acrobat: When you're ready to generate a PDF file from, say, Word, go to the File menu, choose pdfFactory, and select print. The utility isn't free; it runs $50. But if you want to create lots of PDFs, it's worth the bucks. Why? It's brimming with useful features, from being able to preview the PDF and changing URLs to PDF links, to creating a table of contents or sending the doc as an e-mail attachment.

If $50 is more than you want to spend, I'd recommend pdf995--but with two provisos. First, although the utility is free, every time you create a PDF file, your Web browser is opened to a pdf995 promo page. For a $9.95 fee, that goes away. The second problem is far more serious: pdf995 creates files three times as large as pdfFactory. That's no big deal with a two-page doc, but try it with a 40-pager embedded with graphics and you'll quickly see the problem. Nonetheless, if you work with small docs and can put up with the Web-site visit, pdf995 is for you.

Dig this: Want another Steve Bass all-time time-waster? Sure you do. Remember how baseball went through a couple of dreadful weeks? I wasn't worried: If they did strike, I was ready. I had that wonderfully English game of cricket down pat. Try your hand, and be careful not to trip on the wicket.

Label Everything

Labelers are handy devices for printing labels for everything from envelopes to file folders. I've tried two and I like them both: Brother's PT1500PC Computer Label Printer and Dymo's LabelManager PC.

Brother's PT1500PC Computer Label Printer connects via the USB port and runs about $74 discounted. It handles labels 1/4 to 1 inch wide; there are five label types, from laminated and fluorescent to security tapes that can't be lifted off the surface without detection.

Michael Lasky, our gadget maven, likes Dymo's LabelManager PC. He has a strong argument: The LabelManager makes switching label tapes a no-brainer because each tape is in its own pop-in cartridge. Get all the details in "Easy Label Printing."

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