Utilities - December '97

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

Windows 95

3DShellArt
URL: http://home.global.co.za/~olivierd/imaginary
Registered price: $12
Rating:

If you're tired of your desktop icons in Windows 95, let this program jazz them up for you. The icons it provides have a 3D look and are 256-colour. It replaces all desktop icons, as well as the icons in Windows Explorer. Until you register, you'll see a small red "R" attached to each icon. Registration unlocks more capabilities and more icons, and you can download others for free. You'll need an icon utility to work with the icons if you want to customise them further.

You've got beautiful art on your computer, but you've been staring at the same dull photo for a month -- you just don't have time to tinker with changing wallpaper. This free gem of a program scans your hard disk for graphics files, then changes your wallpaper at intervals which you select, varying from every second to each 24 hours. You can of course hand-select the images you want to use. Many graphics formats are supported. You also have the option to tile images under a certain size.

Flashview is useful because it handles so many multimedia formats. Among them: ART, BMP, CUT, DIB, EFF, GEM, GIF, HRZ, IFF, IMG, JPG, LMB, MAC, MSP, PCX, PIC, PNG, RAS, RLE, TGA, TIF, WMF, WPG, WAV and MID.
It's also very easy to use. The program has a familiar Explorer-like interface, so you simply select files, and the right pane of the split window shows a thumbnail view -- or you can view images full size. You can also opt to use another viewer, if you wish. If you're browsing through Explorer itself, you can access Flashview with a right-click of your mouse button.

This new version also offers enhancements such as animated GIF and AVI movie supports.

QuikLink Explorer Gold is an Internet information manager for Windows 95. It comes in various versions, including a freeware, advertiser-supported edition. Basically, the program is a bookmark manager. Its interface is similar to Windows Explorer. You organise your favourite sites by creating and nesting folders: reorganising them is simple, you can drag-and-drop, or you can cut and paste. You can import your bookmarks' lists from any of the popular browsers, keeping the organisation system which you already have.

Clever features include: double-click to open a site in your default browser; right-click pop-up menu; assign specific browsers to specific sites; property sheets for your sites with user-defined labels; search on any or all of the defined properties; integrate the program with your browsers with a hot-link button, and much more.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Windows 3.1x

If you're making your own Christmas cards this year, try out this TrueType font. It's designed to look like black type etched on white Christmas Tree ornaments. You need to use large point sizes to see the letters clearly, but it's a very cute effect.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Previous PC User Offline CD's

Utilities - November '97

Utilities - October '97

Utilities - September '97

Utilities - August '97

Utilities - July '97

Utilities - June '97

Utilities - May '97

Utilities - April '97

Utilities - March '97