News 
- Added from PC Magazine no 12, June 5th of 2007. Hardware, Firefox Utilities, PC Magazine Utilities, Utilities and Backup
- Added
from PC World US edition June 2007.
Mostly Hardware, Search-engines and Antivirus.
- Added from PC Magazine no 11, May 22, 2007. Printers.
- Added from PC Magazine no 10, May 8, 2007: Hardware as usual and Microsoft Vista, Security lock on USB drives and other units like CDs and DVDs etc. External Backup drives
- Added from PC Magazine no 9, April 24th of 2007. Mostly Hardware.
- SoftBase
Favorite of the month of April 2007: Moon Phase II by
Mark Crossley. Yahoo Widget that shows moon phases exactly as it is on
selected Longitude and Latitude. Also exact information about New moon,
rise, set, percentage, full moon etc. I often drag the moon to a nice place in the sky on Webshots many desktop wallpapers.
- Added from PC World US edition May 2007. Mostly Freeware
- Got a new Netgear DG834G modem with built in ADSL modem, router, 4 Ethernet ports and Wireless in one single combi-unit.
On paper same features as the old Aztech, but with a big difference:
This one works flawlessly. Can run P2P, Internet browsing, updating
software, updating antivirus, RSS- feeds, FTP, email with large attachments etc. at the same time
hour after hour without a hiccup. Everything runs smooth. Easy setup.
One single setup within an hour, manually each setting and it just
takes off and never stops it seems. The dealer who sold perhaps 6-7
different brands since many years said he never got a single complaint
on this model of Netgear. The cost difference is 50% more than the
Aztech. But that money is well spent even if one is not an Internet-addict, (I guess).
- Got rid of Aztech DSL600EW
modem with built in ADSL modem, router, 4 Ethernet ports and Wireless
in one single combi-unit. Had it during 6 months and it worked if the
traffic was low and without P2P. However with P2P running in the
background sometimes on 2 or 3 machines in the house at the same time,
it had to be rebooted every 2 or 3 hours even for simple tasks like
sending a simple short email with a local ISP. Okay if you don't use
P2P it might be enough for family use or for a very small office. Many
months I thought that the main problems were because of the broken
cables after a Taiwan earthquake in December last year. Now I
understand it was the modem above all. The Aztech has one single
advantage, a diode which shows if Internet is connected or not. With
the Netgear or D-Link modems etc. one has to check with a browser if one can access
Google etc or try anything else that depends on an Internet connection before one knows
for sure. Of course one can also log into the modem itself and see the status, but all this takes time.
- Added from PC World US edition April 2007. Mostly
Hardware, Utilities, migration to Windows Vista, On line US tax web sites, Motherboards etc.
- Now after a few days still no change of Google PageRank. Still zero,
but the numbers of visitors are still the same as before the ranking
went down. 3 years ago I had up to 10 times more traffic than today
also with 4 in PageRanking. The PageRanking remained 4 until around a week ago
when some pages disappeared. So probably the page ranking is rather useless as an indicator of traffic through Google.
- Suddenly
90% of all web pages on my site disappeared and my Google PageRank went
down from 4 to 0. A nightmare for every web page owner if he has
business on the site. Hopefully the rating goes back up now that the
pages
are back again. It will also be interesting to see how much the rating
really affects the number of visitors on the web site as a whole. If
you want to know Google rating on visited web pages and if
you use Firefox there is an extension "SearchStatus" that shows Google PageRank. Thank God I have this web site more as a hobby than an income.
- SoftBase
Favorite of the month of March 2007: Webshots.
I choose this desktop wallpaper and screensaver software since it is
quite simply amazing pictures that one can download from their website
in 1600 x 1200 resolution or widescreen etc. I have now perhaps a few thousand of
pictures of especially nature and cars which are my favorites. On top of it all
they ask now after a years membership in a polite email message that
they are going to deduct a years fee if I don't contact them. On their
web site there is a possibility of canceling the membership. Why is
this so good? Well I hate deductions from my debit card with only small
cryptic messages long time afterwards that money has been
deducted. Now I know what is going to happen if I don't protest
in advance. The Webshots product is already good enough to be a
favorite even as freeware. Lower resolution, yes, but still fantastic
pictures. I have during a year downloaded gigabytes of beautiful
pictures that I have set to change every 4 hours. Every month brings
hundreds of pictures of nature, flowers, towns and animals
etc. to download from often top notch professional photographers.
- SoftBase
Favorite of the month of February 2007: USB PC Repair System. 37 utilities of freeware / Open Source-ware that can easily deal with most problems on a PC with problems.
- Added
from PC World US edition March 2007.
Mostly Utilities, Browsers, Browser Add-ons.
- My daughter bought a cheap Acer 5572 notebook
for her studies. It has Intel Duo Core CPU, 512 MByte RAM, WiFi,
DVD/CD-RW, 80 GB HD and the usual USB ports etc. It also came with
headphone, carry bag, USB drive 1 GigaByte, theft lock protection as
extra extras. All to a cost of around 735 USD. I helped her with
installation of Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic which
was the OS that was supplied with the machine. All drivers came
from Microsoft installation CD and everything looked nice and pretty.
However it seems that Vista is not ready just yet for consumer usage. I
am a computer consultant and I am used to all kinds of installation
problems. I think I have installed a couple of hundred machines so far
during a few decades. But Vista is really rushed to the market.
WiFi did not function. The microphone did not function etc. No drivers
at Acers web site. The only driver CD supplied with the machine
contained XP drivers only. No sign of Norton Antivirus as promised in
advertisements etc. Vista is not even mentioned at their web site, (mid
February). 512 MByte is enough to start the OS, yes, but if you want to
run Office, only Office 97 works with that small amount of memory. Not
even OpenOffice ver 2.1 could be installed with 512 MByte of Memory
only. The video demands some of the memory on low price notebooks. Lots
of software could not be installed or functioned erratically like AVG
antivirus. Nice if one only sets and forgets, but run it hour after
hour and the problems start. VideoLan (VLC) functions only in old versions. Vista itself could not be installed
directly without repartitioning the hard disk and transforming some
partitions into NTSF. Many things functions almost okay in Vista. A lot
of bugs just wait to be evaporated after complaints of perhaps millions
of users. Wonder how a normal average user would solve these
problems for the time being. The hype around Dual Core, extra low
prices and rush to the market of untested products with the latest
buzz, Vista, seems awkward. My daughter would not choose the Acer
unless they marketed so hard as they did and it might be a matter of
survival for many computer vendors to rush like this. Ended up
installing Windows XP during a night and everything seemed to work. Bye
Bye Vista for now. I will try it again in a couple of months, perhaps
but only in a dual boot system. My eldest sons Acer notebook functions
perfect, but that was bought around a year ago with Windows XP. So
anybody trying Vista on a new notebook should buy lots of memory, at
least one GigaByte + have lots of patience. Still it might be best with
dual boot after installing Windows XP first, before Vista.
- SoftBase
Favorite of the month of January 2007: Whatsrunning from one of my favorite countries, Sweden (I lived there for 36 years). It shows just like Process Explorer
all running processes. However it also shows detailed information about
all kinds of running obsolete drivers, unnecessary IP connections,
Startup controls etc. from myriads of applications old and new. Any
average geek will find lots of uses for this fine application.
- SoftBase
Favorite of the month of December 2006: Nothing yet. Too many holidays...
- Running
updates during late nights since the earthquake outside Japan end of
December effectively reduces broadband to lower than dial up speeds
during day hours to from Asia. It is supposed to get better again
end of January, God willing.
- Experimenting with better rating of TOP 100 lists. Only some lists need to be adjusted. To begin with Top 100 Animation, Top 100 Antivirus and Top 100 Anti Spam should be better rated by now.
- Entering
a lot of Amazon.com links for both new and old products in the
Top 100 lists. Some of the products are classics by now like the Arthur
series, and Rabbit Reader series. Some of the prices are down to 1 US
cent if you hover with the mouse over such an
 -link
in the top 100 lists. There are also a lot of second hand items if you
don't want to buy new. Why then not go to Pricegrabber etc. to compare
price to get the cheapest? Well in my opinion I would prefer safe and
trustworthy vendors over the cheapest even if it costs a few dollars
more. Even in Ebay one has to check the vendors quite a bit before
giving a bid.
- Added from Smartphone and Pocket PC December-January edition, mostly Best of 2006 for Pocket PC and Smartphones. I also added especially from the GPS section in the same number.
- SoftBase favorite No 2 of the
month October 2006: WOT for
Firefox.
 Warns
about suspect web pages. Just in Beta at the moment but very helpful in
most cases. Covers over 10 million web sites. Builds on users own
experiences. Can be misused of course for some sites like religious or political
sites, but it is
up to the user himself to evaluate the information. Simple
function and a gradual scale of different threats on a suspect web
page. Just surf like normal with Peerguardian 2
running in the
background and a Firewall and an Antivirus and a Spyware guard and you
are almost safe, God willing. With that many malware warning software
running you might consider upgrading to at least 1 GByte memory and an
Intel Dual Core or
AMD X2 CPU if you don't have it already. If you use
Vista
you also need a fast graphics card and even more memory. If
you
want to use Vista's faster graphic enhancements. But
WOT f Firefox alone does not need any fast machine at all. Firefox
alone is very fast. Much faster than MS Internet Explorer and WOT takes
perhaps not even seconds to display WOT-results. Even a Google search
result presents colored WOT-icons 
at each link without delay. Option: Combine this protection with one or
two free DNS addresses from OpenDNS.com 
to get a quicker surfing and correction of spell errors in URL:s and
protection against many phishing sites.
- SoftBase favorite of the month
October 2006: FireFox Plug in LinkChecker.
 It
checks in a very uncomplicated way all links on any web
page and
signals the results with colors. Okay is green, Broken link is red,
Skipped, forwarded or very slow is Grey or Yellow. I used Xenu before
and yes it is still a
useful complement to LinkChecker, but it gives many false negatives.
Especially on the SoftBase site with over 11,000 links at the moment.
- SoftBase favorite of the month
September 2006: SyncBackSE.
 Backup,
Synchronization, compression, encryption, manages also open
files, background operation. Personally I use it to automatically
synchronize all important files on my main hard disk once a day to a
second hard disk. I hardly notice when it happens. I do have
RAID
possibilities, but I choose SyncBackSE since I have different sizes on
the hard disks and I can use the second hard disk also for other
storage of files. I also use SyncBackSE to prepare for backing up all
important files compressed with normal uncomplicated ZIP to
DVD:s.
I then use Nero to copy to DVD:s over several DvDs.
SyncBackSE
can be run in amateur mode in a very simple way and in advanced mode
enough to satisfy even a rather demanding computer consultant since 25
years like myself.
- Added a new
web page, some religious Speeches by Bilal Philips
in downloadable MP3-file
format
- SoftBase favorite of the month
August 2006: Yahoo
Widget Engine.
 Endless
of free utilities. It is a pity though that the web site is not very
organized since there are hundreds of them. You have to have a Yahoo
email account to sign in to Yahoo widgets, but this is free also.
Personally I run 4 widgets. One Analog Clock, one Werewolf Monitor
showing moon-phases, one Memory Gauge showing % used memory and one CPU
Portal showing how much the CPU is used. The last one is very useful if
one suspects spyware or if one suspects that something has slowed down
the PC. It can be combined with running the simple Windows XP
Task
Manager sorting on CPU percentage usage or Process Explorer
or even X-RayPC to
find out if any processes are stressing the PC and what it is.
- SoftBase favorite of the month
July 2006: Shazou for Firefox.
Shows on a Google Map where a web server is
situated. Fast and
convenient. I will God willing add more favorites of the month in the
future.
- It is not
easy to choose a good fax software
any longer. Since Symantec WinFax Pro cannot be installed
under a fully updated legal Windows XP it seems. This you will probably
not get to know from Symantec until you have bought it and tried to
install it. And if you have difficulties you have to call their
support. Which costs money. And they still seem not to be able to make
it work. Amazing... Wonder how Symantec could let this happen, since
they have so many other fantastic products. It did work under
the
first versions of XP perhaps before Service pack 1. If it was installed
before updating Windows XP it might function also in later updated
versions of XP. However network probably does not
work. Symantec
WinFax Pro and the first variety from Delrina has made me and many
others spoiled through the years with fantastic fax software. I still
send faxes far and near since not every one of my contacts understand
to make full use of their computers. Email with attachments is of
course the best and cheapest if users understand how to use it and have
modern enough equipment. I am now using Mighty
Fax but I might consider trying Snappy
Fax in the future. However if Symantec one day can fix Winfax
Pro I will buy it as soon as I know it works, God willing.
- Entering
fresh updates from PC
Magazines Utility library
and pensioning their old not downloadable utilities. Free unlimited
downloads for a year after subscription with 20 USD. Individual
downloads 8 USD if you don't want to pay the 20 USD / year.
 RSS feeds about the
library
- Still
struggling with Leaky Gut
but I will add a link to a separate page abut that one day, God willing.
- The
advantage with downloading Computer Magazines like PC Magazine and PC
World from Zinio.com is above
all speed
(a few minutes for delivery with broadband), price and
the fact that the Magazines are fresh.
With a fast enough computer and
a large enough screen, reading becomes a pleasure. One can also have an
extra copy for the notebook if one prefers to read on the move or even
in bed...
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