Software

EBookDroid

Posted by Brad

I think this is my first review of an Android app. I love my Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 and so I figured I should start talking about some of the useful apps I have found. In this case I needed an app that could open XPS files (Microsoft’s copycat of PDFs). I found EBookDroid in the Android app store and it was free to boot.

EBook Droid works pretty well. It has crashed on me a few times, but I think this mainly happens when you try to resize the screen or move around too quickly. No big deal, you just quit and reopen the app and you are back to where you started. EBookDroid can open PDF files too if you desire.

I have not had any problems with the way it renders XPS files. The app can add bookmarks, go to specific pages, and zoom in and out. You scroll through the file by moving the pages up instead of side-to-side like an ebook. I found EBookDroid to be a nice, free app that allows me to open and read XPS files on my tablet.

NTFS for Mac OS X

Posted by Brad

I ran into a problem recently where I wanted to copy some files from my Mac to an external hard drive to take to an office. Unfortunately the hard drive was formatted NTFS which Mac OS X cannot natively write to. I went to Paragon Software’s web site and downloaded a trial version of their product NTFS for Mac OS X. The trial was good for 10 days and since I did not know if I would need it again, I just used the trial version.

I downloaded and installed the software without issue. A reboot was required to finish the installation. After restarting, my external hard drive contents were available and I could drag files from the Mac and copy them to the drive normally. I was able to copy the files from the drive to a PC and they worked just fine.

NTFS for Mac OS X is only $19.95, so if you need this capability on your Mac a lot it is a pretty good deal. Paragon Software makes many other fine products so check out their site if you have other cross platform and native storage, backup, and partition needs.

VMware Fusion 4 – First Impressions

Posted by Brad

Just installed VMware Fusion 4 on the Mac. Electronic download version is a nice price at $50 for upgrade or new users. This version’s supposed to have some new features like HD audio and faster VM performance. The best thing I noticed so far is you can add an icon to the icon bar at the top of the VM window to “Send Ctrl-Alt-Del”. Thank you VMware!

This version also has a more Mac-like appearance. They also moved the device icons from the bottom of the window to the top on the icon bar with an open and hide arrow. Support for OS X Lion is also included.

If you are a VMware Fusion user, you probably want this upgrade. If you are not using VMware Fusion and need to run other OSes on your Mac, what are you waiting for?

Real VNC Free and Windows 7

Posted by Brad

I just started deploying Windows 7 on computers a little at offices and started running into a problem with the Free Edition of VNC. The version is 4.1.3 I think (though the Personal Edition is up to around 4.6). The software installs, but the first thing you notice is the lack of an icon in the system tray. The service says it is running, but when you attempt to connect the connection is refused. I did some digging because I had a Windows 7 computer I had to make work with VNC. I found an article that pertains to Windows Vista but also applies to 7. The article mentions unregistering VNC as a service, then using the software in user mode. I had to run the unregister service command from the start menu as an administrator, but it worked. In user mode VNC will now work on Windows 7, but I also added a shortcut to the startup folder so VNC would load at login.

Apparently the Personal Edition does not have this problem (maybe Real VNC is in no rush to update their Free Edition and would rather have you buy a license). I have a license of the Personal Edition for one computer at each of our offices, but I am not going to buy a license to connect to the computers occasionally. I like the Personal Edition, though, because it encrypts the connection and lets you print from a remote computer locally.

Another online post suggested using the free version of TightVNC which works with Windows 7. I did try TightVNC and have decided to use it for now because it installs easy, works with Windows 7, and even creates a firewall rule for itself during install (something RealVNC’s Free Edition does not). Using RealVNC’s personal edition viewer I had no problem connecting to a computer running TightVNC.

Active Boot Disk 5.3

Posted by Brad

I have already written a post on my good experiences with the Active Boot Disk product from LSoft technologies. Recently I had to work on a messed up system and I upgraded to the latest version of Active Boot Disk (5.3). The new version is more polished and includes instructions on downloading an open source anti-virus program that you can run while working inside of Active Boot Disk. The software includes other new features and updates to the included utilities, but overall I was impressed with how much easier it was to use.

If you haven’t used Active Boot Disk before, I highly recommend it for PC repair on software problems. It is also useful for backing up data from a bad hard drive (if you can read the drive), resetting user passwords, making partition changes, disk images, and wiping hard drives. The new version also lets you load drivers and other software into the boot CD image. If you have an older version of Active Boot Disk, check out the new features and see if it’s worth an upgrade.

Go to LSoft’s Active Boot Disk page for more information on this product.

Blogging on the iPhone with Safari and Opera

Posted by Brad

I tried for the first time to blog from my iPhone the other day. Unfortunately Safari would not recognize the large post area as something in which I could type. So I went to the App Store and downloaded Opera for the iPhone.

Opera claims to load pages faster; it seems a little faster but it is hard to say. Opera did solve my blogging problem though. It also allows you to save user names and passwords for sites as well as save frequently visited pages as shortcuts on its start page. If you use an iPhone and need more from a web browser than Safari, give Opera a try. Its available free from the App Store.

iPhone Backup Extractor

Posted by Brad

My son recently had a problem with his iPhone. Between too many drops and plugging it into an incorrect power source he rendered the phone inaccessible. The only thing on the screen was a message saying the phone needed to be restored. When he plugged it into his PC to restore it, iTunes said the phone had a passcode and could not be restored. Through research I found that in this case you can power off the iPhone then power it on again while simultaneously holding the power and home buttons. Then you should receive a message that the phone is in restore mode and you can restore it through iTunes. Unfortunately my son’s phone’s power button was broken through a drop so I could not perform this procedure.

Getting him another iPhone was not a problem, but he wanted his contacts and pictures. Unfortunately he had not setup an Outlook storage file and his contacts were not synced with Outlook. I did more searching and I found some software that could extract his data from a backup. It is called iPhone Backup Extractor and is available at www.iphonebackupextractor.com. A limited version of the software allows you to extract 4 contacts total and 2 other files at a time. I used the limited version to see if his backup was good, but was surprised that some of his contacts had no phone numbers. I paid $24.95 to register the software (it is only good on one PC and is tied to the hardware). With the full-featured program I extracted the Address Book SQL file from his backup then exported it to an Excel spreadsheet. I then saw that he had many phone numbers styled incorrectly (with +1 or 1 in front of the area code but bracketed with the area code (1234)). After I corrected some of these in Excel and imported them into Outlook, I had contacts which could be synced back to a new phone.

iPhone backup Extractor is a powerful program and can retrieve your iPhone data from a backup if you lost or broke your phone. The trial version is nice because it let’s you see if the program will work for you before buying. Check out this software if you need your data, your iPhone is unusable or unavailable, and you have good backups.

I am tired of companies dumbing-down web sites and software!

Posted by Brad

Today I experienced what is one annoyance in a long line of frustrations with computer software companies thinking everyone is a freaking idiot who uses a computer and therefore the software companies need to hold the users hand to do every simple task. Microsoft has been doing this for years with Windows, making every new version more idiotic than the last by hiding advanced controls, but making lite (read useless) controls available for idiots. As in, “Yes I know how to share files on a network, I don’t need to be warned about dangers” a la Windows XP in workgroup mode.

Microsoft has also been on my list for making it difficult, but still doable, to download an entire service pack file. No I don’t want to just install it on one computer or go through Windows Update on every computer I service to download the stupid SP over a high speed (slow) Internet connection.

But today’s culprit is Adobe. They have been making it more and more difficult to just download the installer for Reader since about version 7 or 8. First the Adobe download manager was a suggestion, now it is mandatory. Good luck finding a place on their site to simply download the installer. “You want to install Reader without going to our awesome website. Well now you have to sign up for some ridiculous license agreement just to install Reader to your 100+ computers on your company LAN.” Total BS!! How about making a link to  an IT support area of your website for people who work in IT and actually know how to fix computers? Hey Adobe, spend more time fixing your buggy, security-holed software and less time making it impossible for IT people to download an installer.

For anyone who knows how to do more than power on a computer and check their email, you can still get Reader from Adobe’s ftp site:

ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/

choose the subfolder for your OS and the version of Reader you would like to download. Get it while you still can!

AVG Add-on for Outlook Prevents Outlook from Starting

Posted by Brad

I had to tackle this issue on a computer recently. The computer was running Outlook 2003 and AVG 9, but could no longer open Outlook. The first in a series of error messages that popped up when you tried to start Outlook said “Unable to start out-of-process scanning server” then “The add-in “C:\PROGRAM FILES\AVG\AVG9\avgxch32.dll” could not be installed or loaded. This problem may be resolved by using Detect and Repair on the Help menu.” Too bad you cannot get to the help menu in Outlook (although when I finally could, running Detect and Repair didn’t help).

I found one tip that said run the Inbox Repair Tool on the pst file. I did that, it found some errors and repaired them, but the AVG error persisted. Then I found a page on AVG’s site which discussed the problem. The answer was to download a utility to address the problem. The link provided was for AVG 8 (guess this problem’s been around for a while), but I changed the link to reflect AVG 9 and it worked. The utility finally let me start Outlook, but when I restarted, the problem came back. There is a log file generated that you can send to AVG for analysis, but I finally used the utility to get into Outlook and just disabled the AVG add-on. I figure when the next version of AVG comes out, maybe the add-on will work again.