Today I found a cool site called iTools.com, which is basically a ever-increasing set of online tools combined and presented nicely in one single interface.

So what kind of tools does iTools.com have available for you to use? Well, a bunch! They have currently broken it down into 5 categories, which will probably grow over time. Right now they are Information, Language, Media, Internet and Money. It’s not all tech-related stuff, but there are quite a few useful tools for techies.

For example, under Information, you can click on Encyclopedias and search multiple sites including WikiPedia, Wolfram Alpha, and Britannica directly from within the iTools website.

It’s almost like a startup page that you have for your browser with links to all your favorite sites. This is kind of a startup page for a bunch of tools that they have integrated into iTools. The queries are all sent to the appropriate sites, but the data is loaded up in iTools.com’s website.

The most useful category from an IT perspective is Internet. Here you have a nice set of tools including DNS, IP Address, Ping, Website Information, and Web Development.

Some of the tools on the site don’t work as expected and I’m not sure if that’s because the site has not been around for too long or what. I’m hoping the developers keep updating it because it’s a cool idea, but there needs to be a lot more tools available in order for me to use it on a regular basis.

However, if you’re looking to do several tasks at once and iTools.com contains the sites you normally use, you can save yourself from having to open multiple tabs to multiple sites and get the job done in one window.

Or even if you don’t care to use these tools via iTools, you can still browse all the different tools since there are many that I had not heard of before, but are very useful. For example, WatchMouse will check the load time of your site from 10 different sites all across the world.

Know of any other sites with links or lists to free online tools? If so, post a comment here and let us know! Enjoy!

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That’s where nice liked tweaker/optimizer programs come in handy. They give you easy access to common settings, optimization, and information about your system all in one place.

One of my favorite little apps is EnhanceMySe7en. They have a free version and a PRO version, but I have always used the free one without really finding a need for paying. You can see a list of features of the free and PRO here:

http://www.seriousbit.com/tweak_windows_7/comparison_table.htm

The program is broken down by sections and then sub-sections, which makes it really easy to get to a particular setting or option quickly. You have Tools, Most Used Tweaks, System, Optimizations and Customizations.

Under Tools, you can quickly get System Info, which gives you quite a bit of into about Windows, the Processor and memory. You can click on Processes, which can help you identify unrecognized process running on your computer.

What’s nice about this program is that it gives you a description of what each process does and where it comes from. Very helpful if you just want to learn about the esoteric processes running on your system.

Flip over to Disk Cleaner or Registry Cleaner and you got yourself a CCleaner basically built-in. You can clean out temp folders, delete invalid paths and registry entries and lots more.

What’s nice about Disk Cleaner is that it also gives you a chart of what’s taking up space on your hard drive, kind of like TreeSize, but again built right in. And if you click on Defragmenter, you can defragment not only the hard drive, but the registry too.

Under Most Used Tweaks, you can quickly tweak performance, security and network settings.

You can disable a lot of access using the security tab like the Control Panel, Command Prompt, Task Manager and lots more. Under Optimizations, you have a ton more options for optimizing memory, startup/shutdown speed, hard drives, etc.

Some of the stuff can be quite technical like for Startup/Shutdown, you can disable CD-ROM autorun, disable last Know Good Config, disable logging of system crashes, etc. Be careful here because some of these options really come in handy when you need to restore you system.

Finally, under Customizations, you can customize the Start Menu, the Desktop, the Taskbar, Media Player and Internet Explorer.

Overall, this program has a ton of features, options and settings. You can really do a lot with it! Enjoy!

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A secure wipe basically performs a low-level format so that the entire disk is overwritten with 0′s. Other software will write junk data multiple times over the disk so that there is no trace of what was there before. Either way, no one is going to be able to get the original data off the hard drive because it’ll be completely gone.

In this post, I’ll mention five fairly popular programs that you can use to really erase a hard disk properly. There are so many good free programs, that it’s really not necessary to spend any money on doing something like wiping a hard drive. You’ll pretty much get the same results using freeware.

DBan (Darik’s Boot and Nuke)

http://www.dban.org/

This is probably the most popular program and is basically a self-contained boot disk. Create a bootable CD using CDBurnerXP or whatever burning program you like and boot to the CD when prompted after restarting your computer.

You can choose from different wipe methods including Gutmann Wipe, Department of Defense Short and Medium and others. I’ve used this program several times and have found that it does an excellent job erasing data on many different types of hard drives. If, for some reason, DBan does not work for you, you can try out the other programs mentioned below.

KillDisk

http://www.killdisk.com/

KillDisk comes in two flavors: Free and Professional. The professional version is definitely better than DBan in terms of options, but it’s not worth shelling out $40 or $50. The free version only has one way to delete the data on a hard drive (erasing with one-pass zeroes), but it’s still good enough for a decent hard drive wipe. Definitely DBan is better since you can use the DoD 5220.22-M protocol.

If you do purchase the program, then you have a great set of 17 choices for deleting your data:

You can use the program from within Windows directly, via DOS or use bootable media so you can wipe any disk whether it was running Windows, Linux, OS X, etc. If you need to erase a large number of disks, it might be worth the monetary investment, otherwise you’re good with the free version.

Disk Wipe

http://www.diskwipe.org/

Another good freeware app is Disk Wipe. The only downside is that it is a Windows app, so you have to run it from within an already existing operating system, whereas the other two mentioned above can be booted to using a CD or  floppy disk. And since it’s a Windows app, it can really only erase hard drives that are Windows formatted (NTFS, FAT32, FAT, etc).

However, if that is not a problem for you, then the program is great! It’s portable and doesn’t require any installation, so you can carry it around on a USB stick or just email it to yourself. It can wipe hard drives, memory sticks, SD cards, etc.

It also supports the advanced algorithms like DoD 5220-22.M, US Army, and Peter Guttman.

Eraser

http://eraser.heidi.ie/

Another program that is similar to Disk Wipe is Eraser. The software is open-source and is routinely updated. The latest version supports Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. Again, the downside is that it only supports the Windows operating system and can only erase the data on drives that support Windows.

Eraser does not support as many advanced algorithms as the other programs mentioned above and is therefore not the best option if you really need to securely erase your hard drive. It’s a free option and does the job, but there is more risk using this program.

HDD Low Level Format Tool

http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

This program is free, but has a speed cap on it, which is around 180GB per hour. If you spend a whopping $3, you can get the program without any speed cap. It supports SATA, IDE, SCSI, SAS, USB and Firewire drives, which is nice.

Again, like the last two mentioned, it only supports the Windows operating system, so if you have a hard drive from a different operating system, you’ll have to plug it into the Windows PC you are using.

Overall, your best options are DBan and KillDisk for really getting just about any hard drive wiped with the highest level of security. If those don’t work for you or the cost is too much, you can try any of the other three programs mentioned.

Is there a program that you use to wipe data securely? If so, post a comment here and let us know. Enjoy!

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When it comes to anti-virus software, you want to know several aspects of the program such as detection rates, scanning speed, number of false positives, etc. All of these in combination make a difference. For example, if one program has a very high detection rate (which is good), it could be offset by the fact that it also finds a lot of false positives. A false positive would basically mean finding a virus or malicious program that really is not malware at all.

False positives can sometimes lead to more problems than actually having a real infection on your computer. Files can be deleted or removed, which could cause the operating system to become unstable or unusable. Also, I would prefer to have a program than takes longer to scan, but has a higher detection rate and a lower false positive rate.

This article will be broken down into these three sections and then we’ll conclude with trying to determine which programs are the best based on the data set.

Highest Detection Rate

The anti-virus software with the best results in terms of detecting the latest virus and malware are as follows:

1. G Data

2. Trustport

3. AVIRA, Qihoo

4. Panda

5. F-Secure, eScan

6. Bitdefender

7. Kaspersky

8. ESET, Avast

9. McAfee

10. AVG

You can read the full detection rate report written by AV-Comparatives.org, a very cool site that performs all kinds of tests on anti-virus software. Basically, the top four have over a 99% detection rate, which is very good.

Scanning Speed

In terms of scanning speed, which includes opening archive files, reading large files, etc. Note that the tests performed by AV-Comparatives is assuming you would want to do a full scan with all options including advanced heuristics, scanning of all file types, etc. Here are the top 10 anti-virus programs in terms of scanning speed:

1. Avast

2. Trend Micro

3. K7

4. McAfee

5. AVIRA

6. AVG

7. Sophos

8. Bitdefender

9. F-Secure

10. Webroot

As we can already see, it’s probably better to choose the programs that show up in both lists, such as AVIRA, F-Secure, McAfee, AVG, etc. However, we should take a look the false positives before deciding.

Number of False Positives

One of the most important aspects to any anti-virus program is it’s ability to distinguish between clean files and infected ones. You have to use this data in conjunction with the detection rates because any program that has a large number of false alarms tends to get a higher score.

There were only eight anti-virus program that had a “low” score in terms of false alarms (listed in order from low to high):

1. McAfee

2. Kaspersky, Microsoft, Panda

3. ESET

4. F-Secure, Trend Micro

5. Bitdefender

6. Avast

7. AVIRA

8. G DATA

As you can see, there are only a few that are on all three lists, namely McAfee, F-Secure, BitDefender, Avast, and AVIRA. You can be pretty sure that installing any of those will be providing you with the best overall anti-virus program out there. Of course, if you favor detection rate over speed, you can adjust accordingly. Or if you wan the least false positives, then you can pick that program.

Either way, the best virus protection software is not as simple as which programs find the most problems on your computer. Like you’ve probably heard before, it’s better to be accurate and precise rather than just precise or just accurate.

What program are you using for protecting your computer from viruses and malware? Do you prefer one program over another? Tell us in the comments!

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Free Opener is a free tool that allows you to view, edit, and print many different types of files without having to download and install software you don’t really need. Free Opener currently supports over 70 different file formats.

Download Free Opener from

http://www.freeopener.com/.

To install Free Opener, double-click the .exe file you downloaded.

If the User Account Control dialog box displays, click Yes to continue.

NOTE: You may not see this dialog box, depending on your User Account Control settings. See our post, Windows 7 – How to configure UAC (User Account Control), for more information.

The Free Opener installation wizard displays. Click Accept to continue with the installation.

The next several screens are offers of extra software options you can install. We not to install any of the extra software and clicked Decline on each screen. Read through each option and decide whether to Accept or Decline each one.

After the various software options, a screen displays asking if you want to Install icon shortcuts on your desktop. These shortcuts are not for Free Opener. They are actually additional software options. We chose not to install these shortcuts by clicking Decline. Decide whether you want to Accept or Decline the installation of these shortcuts and click the appropriate button.

At this point, Free Opener is installed in the background, allowing you to perform other tasks on your computer, if desired.

To view the progress of the installation, click the system tray up arrow and click on the Installing your software button in the popup system tray.

When the installation is done, click Finish to close the installation wizard.

Because Free Opener does not add an icon for itself to the desktop, use the Start menu to open the program.

If the following error dialog box displays, click OK to close it. This error does not seem to affect the usage of Free Opener, at least in our tests. Be cautious, however, as we did not try opening all the formats Free Opener allows.

On the Free Opener main window, click Open, or select Open from the File menu.

The Open dialog box displays. Navigate to the location of the file you want to open, select it, and click Open. For this example, we are opening a PDF file.

NOTE: We have a PDF reader installed, so the .pdf files remain associated with the PDF reader. However, if you do not have any programs installed that will open a specific type of file, Free Opener becomes the associated program for that file type. For example, we do not have Microsoft Word installed on this particular machine, so Free Opener became the program associated with .doc files.

In the PDF file, we can use the buttons on the toolbar to “turn pages” in the document or use the Page Up and Page Down keys on the keyboard.

You can also save the file as a different file name or to a different location and print the file using the File menu.

Use the Edit menu to copy and paste highlighted text, and to find text within a document.

The View menu allows you to zoom in and out in the document and to navigate the pages in the document.

The following images shows a Word document open in Free Opener and text being selected and copied.

NOTE: The menu options and toolbar buttons available in Free Opener are different depending on the type of file you open.

You can also use Free Opener to open various types of code files, image files, audio and video files, Office files, icon files, web pages, and many more file formats. Free Opener is a handy addition to your computer software toolbox.

by Lori Kaufman

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