Manage or create archives using the free jZip archive tool
It only seemed like a short while ago when applications such as WinZip used to be free of charge and the primary choice for creating and managing archived files. The ZIP archive was the only real archive format used on the Windows platform and has since become the industry standard. WinZip is now a commercial application and there are plenty of free archive managers that will enable you to open or extract files from ZIP and other archives.
jZip is one of these free archive management tools and will support ZIP, RAR, 7-Zip and other formats, which means that the major archive-types are covered. If you want to distribute files across the Internet, jZip will enable you to both archive and password-protect your archives, so you could place them securely on your homepage and then email the password to people who you want to have accesses to the archive contents. Download jZip.
PC owners argue that Macs are all design over function, but then Mac users would state that with the latest Intel versions of the iMac, with Bootcamp installed, there's absolutely no reason why you can't use the same system to run both Mac OS X and Windows XP or Vista. However, this does mean that you have to boot in to either Windows or Mac OS X, which means that you might spend all your time in just one of these operating systems. The alternative is to use a virtual manager and to host Windows XP or Vista in a window on top of Mac OS X.
When you install Windows on your system, you generally get a collection of old and vanilla drivers that were designed to get your peripherals working 'out of the box'. Some of us bother to download and install the latest drivers, others do not. Either way, having the latest drivers on your system will improve compatibility and probably help speed up the way your computer access various devices connected to your PC. The snag is, when you need to re-install Windows, all your latest drivers will be discarded.
Anyone who runs their own e-store or administrates a server, you'll find that you're consistently finding people trying to hack in to your system or using a download manager to bombard your server with requests to download a file that has long since existed on your system. Either way, you might find yourself inclined to contact these users, although contacting people through their IP address is far from easy.
When you boot your PC, there are a number of applications and files that start before Windows is fully up-and-running.
Some of these applications are fine, but others can really take there toll on a
system. They can increase the speed in which your PC boots up because it’s
waiting for a particular application to start.
Over the last few years, competition has resulted in a feast of new features and recent mobile phones have become more advanced, boasting their own digital camera and large amounts of expandable memory. It’s now viable for a user to record video on their phone; maybe to capture footage of a concert or gig. What happens to this raw footage and how do we store or edit them?
Over time your PC gathers unused software, temporary files and irrelevant Registry entries that all hinder performance. The more time you spend browsing the Internet, the more likely malicious software and other Internet based malware will affect your computer. Add all of these factors together and it doesn’t take long for your system to become crippled with numerous and often useless applications and files.
Operating systems are based on a modular system that enable you to add or remove codecs that you require to open and save audio and video files, both for playback and those you've created. If you install any modern video or DVD editor, or a AV player, you'll find that a number of the most popular codecs are installed on your system. However, if you've downloaded an old video encoded in the 90s, you'll probably find that it was produced with an old Intel codec that has long since been discontinued. These were designed for producing video for playback from CD, so the quality was poor compared to modern codecs.
Creating documents that you can offer to other people, whether friends or work colleagues, isn't always straightforward. For instance, not everyone has Word installed and the other user may have a completely different operating system. The way around this is to produce a PDF document that has become a defacto standard across every computer, irrespective of operating system. Even most modern web browsers now enable you to view a PDF document inline, without having to open a separate PDF reader.
It can take weeks to choose the correct PC from the hundreds advertised in any computer magazine, but how do you know that the computer received is the same machine advertised? Maybe it’s a custom order with specified components, you may have specified a certain amount of memory or a certain graphics card, but you don’t always know that the PC you’ve paid for is the PC you’ve received. One way to be certain is to run a system analysis tool to check your systems components.
Managing our finances more effectively is something most of us decide that we'll do 'in the future', until we realise we've left it all a bit late and have to rush around at the last minute signing cheques, paying the tax bill or making sure we have enough money to pay for the children's education. If we were a little more pro-active we'd probably be able to avoid such last-minute issues by calculating how much we need to save for the future. If you have a rough idea of your income and expenditure, you can quickly get an idea of what you need to do to balance the books.
If you're using a broadband router, no doubt it contains a hardware-based firewall that's going to be far more secure than any software-based firewall. The snag is that your firewall has to cover every computer connected to your network. Yes, you can set up individual rules for each machine, but some people find it all too difficult to configure their router. Often it's easier to leave the hardware firewall and configure each computer on an individual basis. What is appropriate for you is less appropriate for your young kids. If they connect to your network, you might not want them to leave their computer online, unattended.
Most home users could pick and choose between the applications they choose to write letters and calculate basic finances. You're not limited to Microsoft Office, even, for compatibility reasons. There are commercial alternatives such as WordPerfect Office, Sun StarOffice, 
There are a huge number of different security tools available, such as firewalls, anti-virus apps and virus removal tools. The trouble is running different tools from different suppliers, at the same time, can cause issues. Some applications automatically start up with your system, if more than one application starts in this way, your PC could take time to boot, or not run as smoothly as it should. An alternative would be a full Internet security suite, all of the separate tools would be in one package and for this reason, they would run together more effectively.
The all-new 
Standard printer drivers have include limited functionality for saving ink whilst you print your photos. Basic settings such as landscape or portrait printing options and DPI settings depend on the intended paper you'll use for printing. With printers constantly improving, you’ll need to run a tool that contains a print management system to get the most from your printer and your ink cartridges.
Have you considered running another operating system on your computer? You don't need to ditch Windows in order to test the latest version (Vista) or a Linux-based operating system. The alternative is to install the use of a virtual manager and then host an operating system on top of your existing OS. For instance, a virtual environment will enable you to test Vista without needing to upgrade from XP. If you have mission-critical business software, you could test this within the virtual environment, before you run with a company-wide installation.
Music collections can range from few tracks to thousands of audio files that have been extracted from CDs, downloaded from the Internet, or a sourced from an alternative location. As there are so many different ways of uploading music to your PC, there are some annoying idiosyncrasies involved in gathering music from multiple sources. Mislabeled audio tracks, incorrect track information or your library could be made up of tracks in a number of different file formats. 
At one time or another, we need to by a new PC. Whether replacing an outdated desktop or simply buying a laptop in addition to your desktop. Moving information from one to another would be very useful to a user but what if the newer machine is running a newer operating system? It then becomes more difficult to synchronise both machines.
Modern PC’s are constructed using hundreds of components sourced from numerous manufacturers. There are a huge number of companies out there offering bigger processors, more powerful graphics cards and upgraded memory within the packages they are promoting. This method of building PC’s is great for cutting the cost of the end product, but does the finished article match up to the promoted specification? 
They used to say that you should regularly make a backup of your entire drive. This would enable you to restore the drive (or drive partition) in its entirety if you suffered from a system crash in the future. The thing is, most of us want to backup our data, files and personal settings, rather than our entire drive. Apple realised this with their Mac-only Backup tool, which was an easy point-and-click way of backing up important personal data.
Your ISP often provides you with your own web space for a homepage, but this is something few people use to their advantage. Most provide around 50-200MB of free space; there for a user to utilise for hosting digital photos or the latest vacation home video. This space can also be used to store and backup files or even be used to share files between an office and home computer. It can be used as small, temporary storage area for your personal files.
With the recent release of 
If you've installed Vista recently, you may have noticed that a number of applications do not always perform as they should, on the new operating system. For instance, I recently installed a 'Vista compatible' security application to find warnings each time I boot in to my computer. Annoying as the application can not be uninstalled, either. To avoid these scenarios, you could use a virtual management application to test applications before you install on your system.
We all dream up our own design ideas, especially when it comes to how we want our homes to appear. Of course, we don't really need a professional to design our colour schemes or arrange our furniture, do we? Well, we do if we need to create a loft extension or new kitchen. It can be an arduous task trying to describe to the relevant people how visualise the finished article, because lets face it, not everyone can put pen to paper to illustrate ideas.
There are a few software titles that are installed on every computer. One of these is an office suite (or at least a word processor and, perhaps, a spreadsheet), primarily as everyone, from time to time, will have to write a letter, document or work on office material from home. The thing is, there are few choices and everyone always seems to play safe and stick with Microsoft Office. However, there are a number of free alternatives and they're also Microsoft Office compatible, so will be ideal for the occasional letter writing or for importing Word documents.
Some applications go months or years without an update. Apple iTunes used to be one of them. You might have one major release a year, then a minor release during the year. In the last few weeks we've had three updates, which is unprecedented. Most of these updates are irrelevant if you're a UK iPod user as they are geared towards enabling you to create ringtones for your iPhone. Mind you, depending on what is announced at the Apple UK even this morning, UK users may have access to the iPhone, soon..
Unless you really know what you're doing, most computer users do not attempt to fiddle around with their BIOS settings, never mind opening up their PC and changing jumper settings for their onboard system, graphics card or drive fans. This doesn't always mean your PC has been configured correctly. There are many scenarios where you're using your computer and the fan is on constantly, inconsistently or not at all, leading to a rather warm machine. Not ideal if you're trying to use a laptop.
Switching to an alternative web browser makes sense for a number of people. Firefox and Opera are developed rapidly, with new features, security fixes and other enhancements released on a monthly basis. These are fast browsers, supporting the latest web standards, and ship with a range of extensions and gadgets that expand the core functionality. Firefox has a number of backup and synchronisation extensions, which enable you to sync your data between your Firefox browsers, irrespective of the operating system or location of the browser.
Modern computer hardware is so trouble-free (purely from a hardware perspective) that the chances of our external USB hard drive ceasing to operate is negliable. Therefore most of us do not spend time worrying whether we'll lose important data due to hard drive malfunction. However, software and user issues are another matter. For instance, how many of us have accidentally deleted a file and then realised that, weeks later, you really needed that file and you can't find it elsewhere? Luckily, unless you've wiped your drive, deleted files are often recoverable.
Most of us spend time watching programmes such as Top Gear, but almost none of us can afford the super cars that they feature on these shows. They're immensely popular though, so there are obviously many people who want to drive the latest Aston Martin, Audi A8 or BMW M3.
Managing your photos through free photo management tools only enables you to take advantage of basic functionality. If you have a high-end digital camera, you'll want full control over the manipulation of the photos, how they appear on printed material and more. ACDSee was once a basic image and photo viewer, but since the advent of digital photography it has moved on and has become more of a photo management tool.
Customising your computer desktop is something that nearly everyone will perform, whether adjusting the background and screensaver or colours, font sizes and the overall look and feel. Desktops can be customised for ease of use or simply for aesthetic value. 
Most of us rely on our web browser to manage our downloads from the Internet, whether these are small updates or larger music or movies files. We advise you install and use a download manager, which could prove to be a useful tool for anyone who regularly obtains files from the Internet, they help to prioritise, manage and in some cases speed up downloads.
There are a few common tasks and one of these is the installation of new software on our PC, whether they are full applications, game demos or interesting freeware. When it comes to uninstalling unwanted applications, the Windows Add/Remove tool can often leave files on your system and entries within your Registry.
Apart from email, web browsing is probably the primary activity for most computer users. We use our web browser to surf the web, read blog posts, check the latest news and download files. Therefore we're quite particular about the speed of our browser, usability, how we can configure the user-interface and more. This is why modern and regularly updated web browsers such as Firefox and Opera have become really popular.
Managing and editing your music library can be tedious. Correcting names, track information and searching for album artwork can be time consuming. It would be great if you had one tool which enabled you to all of these things with relative ease.
There are times when we all have a fantastic idea and a collection of thoughts and plans that we need to put in to place to make this idea happen. For instance, you might believe that you've thought of a business that is the next 'big thing', but you have to convince your bank manager. If you have a load of scribbles on a piece of paper, you're not going to impress anyone quickly. If you can turn your thoughts and ideas in to something more business-like, you might get the money you require.
Despite all the recent additions to the anti-spyware market, there are a couple of free anti-spyware tools that have been available for ages, have a tried-and-tested following and are two of vnunet.com's most popular downloads. One of these is 
With so many people working outside of the office, trying to manage a multi-user project isn't always easy. Finishing certain segments of the code is vital for other elements to progress. Therefore each user needs to know when the project is due to start, the completion date and how their work fits in to the schedule. Short of emailing them the details each week, the other alternative is to use project planning software where all this information can be contained within one interface and shared between different users.
The key web browser developers are competing against each other with innovative new features that improve our browsing experience. Some of these new features aren't exactly compelling, but Opera using a system of previewing open tabs by showing a visual preview of the tab contents, when you hold your mouse over each tab. If you have a few tabs open from the same website, this makes differentiating the tab contents far easier. With Firefox, you only get a text description of each open tab.
Only a few years ago many Internet users would swear by Eudora, even though it was a paid-for product. You'd often find that people would rate this over and above the free Outlook Express, even though that was a more than capable email client. How times have changed. Even though Outlook Express is no more, Thunderbird is one of the more popular free email clients, which has left the publishers of Eudora with a dilemma - they still have a large userbase, but the long-term future of a commercial Eudora didn't make financial sense.
