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Software Some software you just can't do without. Below are links to utilities that we find indispensible as well as some information on programs worth buying. Please respect shareware writers' agreements and register their products if you find them useful. If you're experiencing problems downloading large files, some of the software mentioned below is available from Protech Systems. Contact us with any requests. |
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Adobe Acrobat Reader v7.05 (20MB) is a free utility for viewing Portable Document Format files (PDF) in Windows XP and higher |
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Adobe Acrobat Reader v6.02 (9MB) is a free utility for viewing Portable Document Format files (PDF) in Windows'98 and earlier |
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IrfanView v3.98 (0.9MB) has to be the most efficient image viewer available - and it's FREE! Extra plugins are available here. Irfan Skiljan has done an excellent job of providing one small package that opens almost every concievable picture, movie, or sound file. Write and thank him! |
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Paint Shop Pro vX, now owned by Corel, is an easy-to-learn and affordable graphics editor, capable of tasks associated with far more expensive products. The older Version 3 (1.9MB) is small and efficient for picture viewing and simple editing. |
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WinZip v10.0 (6MB) is a convenient, Windows-based utility for handling zip, arj, Base-64, uu-encoded and other compressed formats. Zip is by far the most popular method of compressing files for distribution on the Internet.Those who prefer good-old version 7 may download it here. |
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vMPEG (68kB) is the smallest, simplest MPEG viewer I've seen (68kB), for operating systems that don't come with their own MPEG viewing facility. I have no idea where it originates so, it's available here. Time sync is poor and really only useful for file preview purposes. |
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Zoom Player v4.51 (1MB) is a complete replacement for "Media Player". This tiny program plays most movie file types incl. MPEG-1 & 2, DVD, ASF, AVI etc. and includes fast and slow motion, zoom, skins. Other professional versions and skins are available from Inmatrix. |
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ICQ v5.1 (5.8MB) or I Seek You, is a very popular communications package that indicates when someone is online so that you can chat with them (type back and forth in real time). It also allows short notes to be left for an offline user, like a beeper message. |
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Skype v2.0 (9MB) allows you to talk (and type, send video, transfer files...) to anyone anywhere for free. |
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Software Archives The software listed above, and a whole lot more, can be download from some of the worlds most popular software archives. |
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CNet Shareware.com can be a little slow but provides a comprehensive software search facility. |
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Tucows has more than 1000 mirror sites so it's easy to find one that's close and ensure quick downloads. |
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WinFiles, renamed from the old Windows95.com, has a pretty interface and provides a wide range of software types for all versions of Windows. |
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ZDNet allows users to search their huge software library as well as view information on both hardware and software. |
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Search A search engine is a computer who's job it is to search the Internet for documents containing words that you specify. Note that the documents it finds are not necessarily about the subject entered - they merely contains the word, or words, somewhere in the text. Some of the many search engines are listed below. Some help is provided here for improving search results. |
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AltaVista describes itself as the most powerful and useful guide to the Net - and I agree. |
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Ananzi is sadly slow, considering it's right here in South Africa. Search results are quite limited too. |
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AOL Netfind is quite comprehensive and neatly laid out. It's also surprizingly fast for a huge and busy site. |
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Excite has a page that's so busy, it's hard to find the text box, but information is very comprehensive. |
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HotBot is a loudly colorful site that's a favorite with software seekers. |
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Infoseek is a neat enough site with useful browsing facilities. |
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Lycos is another busy page with enough of links to get you lost on an information adventure. |
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Magellan is another search engine by Excite. Not the fastest site but neat and simple to browse. |
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WebCrawler is one of the longest running engines and excellent for finding obscure documents. |
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Yahoo is an extremely popular site with many exciting facilities, if you can get in. |
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FAQ A FAQ - often pronounced faq ;-) is a compilation of Frequently Asked Questions and, hopefully, their answers. My last AltaVista search for "faq" produced more than 35million possibilities so, they're pretty popular things. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology houses the official Usenet FAQ archive at ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/faqs. This enormous collection can be quite daunting. |
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The Internet FAQ Consortium provides a slightly more user-friendly approach to finding answers. |
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