Home Office: Finding Utilities

The Web is packed with tools; here's how to keep safe when hunting for them.

Steve Bass

I can't go more than a few days without spending some time hunting down good utilities. The challenge isn't finding utilities; there are too many to count. It's locating keepers, the ones that handle a task or two really well--and, with any luck, are free and don't contain spyware.

Last week I profiled four top-notch tools; make sure you check them out. This week I'll bring you some more.

The Safety Factor

If you stalk the Web looking for utilities, you need to protect yourself. Here are a few of the steps I take:

1. Update your antivirus software before you start exploring. Sure, I know most of you are smart enough to do this, but I'd be remiss if I didn't remind you.
2. Windows XP and ME users need to take a second to set a System Restore point. It's easy: From the Start menu, choose Help, Support; select "Undo changes to your computer with System Restore"; and click "Create a restore point" from within the System Restore dialog box.
3. Create a new folder on your desktop called Tools-Experiment and quarantine your downloads in that folder. Scan them with your antivirus program after you've unzipped them.
4. After installing a bunch of utilities, run Spybot to make sure you haven't inadvertently loaded up your PC with spyware.

Dig This: Did you hear about the moon landing hoax? You'll want to watch the video, then get the real story.

More Utilities to Fill Your Hard Drive

There's been a rash of articles covering some great discoveries. In fact, I wrote two columns just jam-packed with tools you can use.

In my Home Office column for our August issue, "Keep Your Files Within Easy Reach," I wrote about five nifty utilities, each designed to help you manage your hard drive's files. The one I'd like most for you to pay attention to is 2xExplorer, a slick little Windows Explorer replacement.

For the September issue I profiled 11 slick, free tools in "Must-Have Free Utilities Catalog 2003." The two I don't want you to miss are ToolBar Chest, which puts your Internet Explorer toolbar back in order, and PureText, a utility that strips HTML and other formatting junk from text you get from e-mail messages and Web sites.

In the September column I barely had room to mention ActiveWords, an inexpensive utility that uses shortcuts to launch applications and reduce keystrokes. Ramon "Bud" McLeod has more to say about the product in "ActiveWords Turns Words Into Actions."

Tools for Smarter Computing

Here are a few more utilities that do things you never thought possible:

• HideOutlook. This freebie lets you move Microsoft Outlook from the taskbar to the system tray.
• PowerStrip. More than 21,000 PCWorld.com readers have downloaded this valuable utility. It performs a whole array of desktop controls, changes display settings, and examines system diagnostics and font controls. It's $30 to keep but free to try.
• NistTime. Win XP users won't need this, but the rest of you might be interested. This free tool synchronizes your system's time with the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado.
• Icon Snatcher. This freebie lets you extract icons from all sorts of files, then save them in bitmap form and use them on your desktop.

You want even more tools, I know. Head for "Free Utilities: Improve Performance, Automatically Launch Programs," a thorough list of tools you'll want to try.

Dig This: If someone tells you that most accidents happen at home, don't believe it. They happen elsewhere when not-so-bright people do incredibly dumb things.

The Best of the Utility Articles

Two of my favorite writers--Robert Luhn and Kirk Steers--spent weeks talking to users, searching the Internet, and bothering me for suggestions. Then they wrote "20 Tools for Trouble-Free Computing," a compendium of heretofore unknown gems.

Acronis True Image saves an image to your hard drive (or other external device) and lets you restore the entire image, or individual files from it. Read details about the product's features in "Acronis Offers New and Improved PC Utilities," a newsy story by Lincoln Spector.

Two utilities everyone knows about are PKZip and WinZip, both top-quality compression programs. What you probably don't know is that some of the files these two produce aren't compatible with similar programs. For details, read ".Zip File Format Splinters," which exposes the compatibility (or incompatibility) problems.

On the file management front, PentaWare, the company that also produces the compression program PentaZip, has released a Windows Explorer substitute. See what Lincoln has to say about it in "PentaWare Ships File Manager."

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