Free Software Recommendations

[BaaBaa.]

http://www.dropbox.com/

[migrant]

http://www.dropbox.com/

A lawyer friend uses dropbox and highly recommends it. I haven't had a chance to look yet, good you like it too!!

[Terry]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but if you want to get a good file converter, check out 'Format Factory'

It's free and works great with video files as well as ordinary pics and audio.

[Crocket]

Hi All

Just had massive hard drive failure and eventually recovered most of my files, photos etc.

I bought this program off Ebay then later found it to be freeware.

It even recovers files from formatted drives.

Takes a little finding amongst the usual ads, follow the link to download for free.

http://www.pandorarecovery.com/download/

Hope it helps someone.

Regards

Crocket

A good speach should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to rouse the interest, but long enough to cover the essentials.

[Big Boy]

http://www.dropbox.com/

I loaded it to give somebody an additional 250Mb storage space as a recommendation. I had no intention of using it. However, on the laptop I prefer to use, it was very intrusive. Everytime I switched my laptop on, even though I wasn't using dropbox, my machine would freeze for upto 15 minutes while I guess it was synchronising files.

As I had never actually used it in anger, I wonder what information it was passing from my laptop, and to who?

Anyway, I've removed it today, and the laptop is back to normal.

I guess anybody using a high powered machine wouldn't really notice the information being synchronised. However, I would be seriously concerned at what data is being transmitted by dropbox - do you really know what it's sending? Maybe it isn't as free as you imagine.

[BaaBaa.]

Never noticed it on startup. Find it really handy TBH.

[PeteC]

I use similar BB but the Apple version called IDisk. You select the files and each time you turn your computer on, or make a change to the selected files, it will sync automatically. It's set up to sync nothing but what you have preselected.

Another company named Mozy is quite good also just for on-line backups. 2GB of storage I believe is free. As above, you select the files you want regularly backed up and during the course of your computer usage it will store your changes to those files in a separate part of the program on your machine. Then when the hour you've selected for daily back ups arrives, it sends all with no disruption to your computing at all. Pete

EDIT: Here's the link http://mozy.com/

[Big Boy]

That's fine if you've selected something for backup. I selected absolutely nothing.

[Spitfire]

Can anyone recommend a decent free PDF file editor?

All the ones I've come across either aren't free or only allow you to create one (PDF file), not edit an existing one, ie deleting stuff in it you don't want or need.

I use Foxit reader but the Foxit 'Phantom' editor, while good, is definitely not free by any stretch of the imagination.

Any pointers welcome.

Is there a free FF add-on for this maybe?

[TimandT]

Cannot recommend, but if you search for Firefox add-ons you should find this http://www.pdfescape.com/

[Spitfire]

Thanks for that, will give it a whirl and see how it does.

[buksida]

Ever wondered what is using all of that space on your hard disk? I have just been trying to copy some stuff to my thumb drive which is telling me it is full, had a look in explorer and there are only a few documents and photos on it so something must be amiss.

Downloaded this handy little tool http://windirstat.info/ which tells me what is really on it - turns out there was a bunch of stuff hidden in a recycled folder for that drive. Blitzed it and now have my space back again!

[hhfarang]

Speaking of thumb drives, I have a 128gb one I bought to use for photo backup and it has never worked with my XP system. Would work with Windows 7 but not the older FAT32 file system. When I tried to format it using the Windoz format utility in XP it failed... it came formatted as EXFAT. I found and downloaded this tiny fast formatting utility that formatted it to FAT32 in seconds and now the full drive is available to my XP system... so if you're having trouble using the Windoz format utility on an external storage media, or if you need a specific format type, give this little gem a try... it's small, fast, and free... all software should be this way!

http://download.cnet.com/HP-USB-Disk-St ... 74082.html