Utilities - November '97

Software to protect your PC, tune up your system, read or play common file formats, and other essential tasks.

VET Anti-Virus Paint Shop ProWinZip Calypso Pumpkin Deskbrain File Find Elbow Room Stuffit Expander Thunderbyte Cool Edit Nettoob Quicktime Video for Windows Anti-Viral Toolkit Pro Bobby

VET Anti-Virus
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Vet is one of Australia's leading anti-virus software for the home, office, or school. Vet is used by thousands of PCs in Australia and overseas Vet is available for all common operating systems, comes with free unlimited email upgrades, free phone support and mailed quarterly upgrades.

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PaintShop Pro has always been our favourite graphic file viewer and converter, but in this latest version, this shareware program is now a comprehensive graphics package. As well as providing a Browse utility for managing graphics files, it lets you create and save graphics in the GIF and JPG formats common on the Web. It also provides image manipulation tools that'll let you grab an image and edit it to your heart's content.

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This shareware utility is our perennial favourite for unzipping and zipping just about every type of compressed file, as well as for decoding Internet file formats, such as UUencode, BinHex and MIME.

This new version features an updated zip/unzip engine with automatic support for multi-disk ZIP files, plus a number of Windows Explorer menu enhancements. But perhaps the best new feature is the free WinZip Internet Browser Support Add-On. Using this free add-on, you can download and open archives from the Internet with one click via Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.

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Calypso is a sophisticated file manager, with an Office 97 look, and an impressive array of features, including multithreading capabilities --you'll like being able to select files from several directories on various disks, and move them to another directory. The program offers support for huge partitions, multimedia viewers and players, compression, directory-level security, a built-in file finder, CD-ROM caching, as well as comprehensive file and disk management. Especially valuable is the Tag Wizard, a macro program which lets you repeat operations you perform periodically on directories and files.

Angela Booth

DeskBrain is a handy toolkit for Windows 95 users. The utilities include: define up to 30 applications to start at a click; one click access to all drives, plus My Computer, and Control Panel; create 10 user-defined Quick Folders; WipeDisk to erase everything on a floppy; a password manager and many more items, including a contacts manager. You can run DeskBrain at startup, and uses no desk space -- it runs as a tiny icon in your system tray. The nice thing about this program is that all the included utilities are very useful.

Angela Booth

If you're looking for a small, ultra-fast utility to locate files on your system, try this simple but powerful program. It consists of three windows: a drive window on the left, showing all the drives on your system, and on the right, the search query box, with the results box underneath it.

Angela Booth

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Elbow Room gives you more space on your desktop. The program lets you create multiple sessions, so that you can load all the applications you want to work with in one session, load other applications in another session, and switch between them. You no longer have the hassle of maximising and minimising windows, and trying to resize them so that you can see more than one at a time. Great features include the ability to save a session of applications in a window and open at another time; move applications among windows; multiple sessions; add and remove sessions easily, and more. Lets you concentrate on your work, rather than your tools.

Angela Booth

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WinZip won't handle a .SIT file created by the Macintosh compressor, StuffIt. That's when you'll need StuffIt for Windows. It will also handle most other compressed and Internet file formats, and although not as flexible and powerful as WinZip, StuffIt will uncompress files quickly, easily and unobtrusively.

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From our experience, one of the most reliable virus scanners around. Thunderbyte will detect all known viruses, plus guard against new and unknown viruses. For full protection and virus cleaning capabilities you will need to register, but the shareware version will alert you to any virus you may have and offer several options to getting rid of it.

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CoolEdit will play just about any sound file format, but it's key application is as a sound file editor -- and it's one of the best in the business, allowing you edit clips and add all sorts of special effects easily. And just released is Cool Edit Pro for power users wanting a multi-track recorder.

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NetToob is a handy all-in-one multimedia player which will play nearly all types of video files and some sound files, either over the Net or on your hard disk.

This free player from Apple allows PC users to play Quicktime. MOV files -- the standard movie file format for the Macintosh, and used by many cross-platform multimedia CD-ROMs.

It's built into Window 95, but Windows 3.1x users will need this add-on to play Video for Windows .AVI movie files.

The latest version of this excellent Anti-virus program; this version available only to PC User readers.

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This is the last version of Bobby as freeware, so if you haven't tried this amazing DOS graphical file manager, do it now. Bobby includes all the usual file management features: copy, move, delete etc, at a click of a button. Special features in Bobby include a file finder, viewing graphics (GIF, PCX, BMP, JPEG), playing sound files, viewing text files, archiving to ZIP, unloading from DOS to free up memory, hotkeys to run your favourite programs, a complete online manual and much more. The program is very easy to install and use.

Angela Booth

Previous PC User Offline CD's

Utilities - October '97

Utilities - September '97

Utilities - August '97

Utilities - July '97

Utilities - June '97

Utilities - May '97

Utilities - April '97

Utilities - March '97