.
... Downloads
.
.
....  













Looking for more downloads?

Windows and DOS
shareware.com
TuCows

Mac
info-mac
Umich archive

Amiga
Aminet

OS/2
os2.com

Games
Hyperactive

   
 


Here you can find the four shareware programs from the magazine's Downloads section. Check out the sidebar for a links to popular download sites.

ZinCheck 2.0

Size: 1.48Mb
Licence: Shareware
Platforms: Win95/98/NT
Where: http://www.zinchak.com/
Rating: Four Stars

ZinCheck Mail lets you access and monitor multiple Web-based email accounts right from your desktop. It even adds features to your Web-based email accounts that providers like HotMail (http://www.hotmail.com/) and Yahoo Mail (http://www.yahoo.com/) don't have.

ZinCheck speeds up your email access because it doesn't spend time downloading images, only the text information required for the email. With ZinCheck you can avoid all the ads, sponsorship blurb and other distracting information on the Web pages of your favourite Web-based mail accounts. If you're worried about online charges, download all your mail and respond to it offline

You can also search all your mails on all accounts based on certain criteria; use your address book from all accounts to send mail from any account and synchronise your remote address books; or set up filters to automatically reply to, forward or delete an email, based on certain user defined conditions. You also can check mail folders other than the in-box - especially important if you're filtering mail.

ZinCheck is unobtrusive, checking mail in the background while you work and the "live update" feature makes sure you're running with the latest version.

 

Neoplanet 2.0

Size: 1.9 Mb
Licence: Freeware
Platforms: Win95/98/NT
Where: http://www.neoplanet.com/
Rating: Five Stars

Neoplanet is not really a new Web browser in its own right - it's more like a new skin for your Internet Explorer. Neoplanet uses all the HTML-rendering power of IE but allows you to customise the look and feel completely. In addition, Neoplanet adds a few additional features to improve your overall browsing experience. The "schemes" are fantastic - they're basically desktop themes for your Web browser and they're so easy to implement. Just click on a link in the growing scheme archive and that's that. Of course you can build your own, but for the moment there's little or no help. Neoplanet also adds additional toolbars and options that greatly enhance the whole functionality of the user interface in addition to making it look great.

Neoplanet has it's own simple and robust email system, reminiscent of the way Netscape does mail. The Channel Designer comes complete with a library of predefined IE Channels and gives you the power to quickly create your own. Search features include a specialised Neoplanet search window integrating C-Net's Snap! (http://www.snap.com/) directory and the popular Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/) "What's Related" tool.

 

 

IMS Web Spinner

Size: 2.8 MB
Licence: Shareware $29.95US
Platforms: Win95/98/NT
Where: http://www.virtualmechanics.com/
Rating: Four Stars

IMS Web Spinner is a bargain basement WYSIWY Web editor, that features the same kind of object and positioning paradigm as the much lauded NetObjects Fusion (http://www.netobjects.com/). Web Spinner is very much a NetObjects Junior and obviously doesn't have the same feature set as its commercial big brother. However, if you want to whip up a personal Web site or a small business site on a shoestring budget, this could be just the thing you're after.

Interestingly, Web Spinner appears to dispense with older styles of HTML formatting and uses only the Cascading Style Sheet definition for positioning objects and the like. Traditional page layout tricks like table formatting are no where to be seen. Although this doesn't bode well for users with earlier browser versions, it does mean that page layout and development can be considerably simplified.

Web Spinner supports most popular image formats and includes rudimentary graphics tools. Best of all, Web Spinner handles Rich Text letting you import word processing documents with ease. In short, if you're happy to run the risk of annoying those visitors who haven't upgraded their browsers IMS Web Spinner has plenty of options and is great value for money.
 

Vern & Blanch

Size:200Kb (Vern) & 155Kb (Blanch)
Licence: Shareware $10
Platforms: Win95/98/NT
Where: http://www.cam.org/~oneguy/
Rating: Three and a half Stars

Vern is the Windows "Virtual Environment Resource Manager" from One Guy Coding. Vern essentially allows you to expand your virtual desktop to multiple screens (like X-Windows for the UNIX minded). This means that you can have Word in one screen-full and then flick to a multitude of directory windows, then perhaps across to your FTP program or whatever. The amount of Virtual desktop space is really only limited by the memory you have installed on your system.

Each virtual desktop can have its own colour scheme and wallpaper, and you can choose to hide all the files and folders you might have on your desktop to get rid of the inevitable clutter. Each application can be assigned its own priority so if you have lots of apps open you can stop things from tying up too much CPU time.

One Guy Coding's other offering is Blanch, a button launcher that comes bundled for the same price with Vern. Blanch provides a fully customisable toolbar that you can use to pop a shortcut to all of your favourite applications, similar to the MS Office toolbar. There are all sorts of options for importing, dragging and dropping and editing the list of programs you can activate from Blanch.

Together Blanch and Vern form another welcome enhancement to the Windows environment..

   


© Next Publishing 1998