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Fred: Here are my picks of shareware culled from over 1000 downloads, so I think they're quite good. Descriptions just hint at their quality....

Internet programs...

Naviscope ( http://www.naviscope.com/ ) Combines net accelerator, ad blocker, net history, searcher, site link lister, atomic clock, MRU/RWIN, great access status indicators, ping, route tracer, and many others. All in one smooth package. Freeware.

Powermarks ( http://www.kaylon.com ) Hold thousands of bookmarks, and access groups of them by multiple keywords you assign on the fly. They don't have to fit in predefined categories, which is a great idea making finding far easier. I won't go back to fixed categories. Works with Opera Browser too. $24.95

Download Accelerator Plus ( http://www.speedbit.com/ ) Good integration with IE, Netscape, Opera. Download to folder based on extension. Auto-select best site. Divide file into many sections. Optimize for DSL. Virus check. Scheduler. Won't download if an html page. $29.95.

Google Toolbar ( http://toolbar.google.com/ ) Makes the best search engine easy to reach. Needs IE5+. Freeware.

My browser layout is: Title bar has naviscope parked. Menu line: IE5 menu, IE5 toolbar, Google toolbar. Toolbar line: Address window, link bar System tray: Powermarks, autosizer.

My favorite Text Editors: Metapad ( http://welcome.to/metapad/ ) Quick-loading notepad replacement views RTF correctly. Http links will go to page in browser. Two font choice. Freeware. Copy Metapad in Windows directory, go to DOS, rename Notepad.exe to Notepad0.exe, and Metapad to Notepad.exe

EditPad Lite ( http://www.editpadlite.com/editpadlite.html ) Nice print preview, document bar, nifty toolbar gives easy font change, word-wrap at various lengths. Freeware.

Textpad ( http://www.textpad.com/ ) Very versatile text editor. Good block-select and reformatting ability.$27.00

My favorite Word Processor: Atlantis Nova ( http://www.rssol.com/en/ ) Paste pictures and save in greatly compressed RTF. Reads doc & wri files. Nice zoom and print preview. Shareware upgrade ($27.00) has a great format brush that reformats any words you just touch, and auto-correct speller.

Crypt Edit ( http://www.polyedit.com/downloads.shtml ) Print preview, configurable toolbars, file window tabs, picture and object insertion, HTML clearing, saving files encrypted and compressed, spell-checker, E-mail with address book, line sorting. Reads and writes MS Word, Wordpad, Word Perfect, RTF, HTML. Imports Excel97. Export to Unix or Mac format. Freeware

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System Utilities...

TClockEx ( http://users.iafrica.com/d/da/dalen/tclockex.htm ) Tray clock with formatable seconds and date. CPU and RAM monitors use no extra screen space. Freeware.

CobaClock ( http://www.cobasoft.com  ) Analog clock/alarm/timer in the tray. Keeps a hideable continuing report of programs run and net sites visited. $9.95

WinDates ( http://www.rockinsoftware.com ) Efficient calendar with easy appointment entry, including recurring events and birthday ages. Also does alarms. Can open on first power-up daily.$19.95.

IrfanView ( http://www.irfanview.com/ ) Very quick versatile graphic viewer. Fit to screen or easily zoom, modify image, Scan a directory manually or slideshow. Screen capture. Extremely easy to use. Freeware.

Disk Data Analyzer ( http://www.digallery.com/diskdata/ ) Checks disk space utilization to show your largest folders. Freeware.

Clean System Directory ( http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/index.html#clnsys ) Quick and easy program to tell what DLLs are unused. Freeware.

Power Bar ( http://plemsoft.com ) Desktop toolbar, Mem usage, drivebar, program icon groups, macros, clipboard, screen capture, virtual desktops, alarm, etc. Shareware $9.00.

DCOM ( http://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/dirutil.html ) My personal favorite DOS shell.

Autosizer ( http://www.southbaypc.com/AutoSizer/ ) Forces Internet Explorer windows to open maximized. Works with any other program you choose too. Freeware.

Power Menu ( http://www.veridicus.com/tummy/programming/powermenu/ ) Gives any program Always on top, Minimize to tray, Priority, and Transparency (NT/XP/2K). All accessed thru windows upper-left system menu. Freeware

AShampoo Uninstaller ( http://www.ashampoo.com/products/0103/ ) Take a snapshot of your system before and after an installation. The difference (log file) can be used to totally remove all changes. What I like about this program is that you can limit both the file and registry snapshots to only the drives and areas that might change. This greatly speeds up the snapshots.

---dspear

Awesome list, Dspear. Thanks!

And if you liked that list, come check out the others at http://www.informationweek.com/936/langa.htm !

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Dear Fred, I have asked the following in a number of forums without getting a solution.....

I am using Windows 98, Internet Explorer 6.0 and a HP Printer 932C. My computer freezes about 30% of the time when I try to print. Multiple striking of CTRL/ALT/DEL eventually gets me a pop-up saying "Msgsrv32 (Not Responding)". I then click on "Cancel" and usually the printing proceeds, except on some occasions when the computer shuts down entirely! Is there no way to avoid this annoying detour? I believe that "Msgsrv" is an embedded (now that's become a familiar word hasn't it?) program in Windows and cannot be removed, though what it does I have no idea. I've never heard of anyone else having this problem. ---Regards, Ken Massey

Oh, it's not just you, Ken! Msgsrv32 has been around--- and has been causing trouble--- all the way back to Windows 95!

Msgsrv32 is actually a general-purpose OS component in Win95/98/Me that handles a variety of tasks, explained here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=138708 . And no, it can't and shouldn't be removed. In fact, it may not even be the problem, but we'll come back to that.

This page lists the 14 most common types of error messages that Msgsrv32 usually can generate, along with links to the specific fixes. (Finding the correct fix hinges on the full, exact error message you get, beyond the simple "not responding"). http://www.generation.net/~hleboeuf/ermsgs32.htm

If that doesn't help, you could try a general search of the MS Knowledgebase, which has no fewer than 25 articles relating to problems with Msgsrv32: The URL is enormous--- over 200 characters long---  so let me supply these shorter alternatives: http://tinyurl.com/aky8 or http://snurl.com/193l

Backing up even further, Google Groups lists over 27,000 entries ( http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Msgsrv32&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search ) and Google itself delivers some 4000 more http://www.google.com/search?q=Msgsrv32

Finally, I must point out that from afar, it's impossible to say if your problem is actually with Msgsrv32, or if there's something bad in your printing subsystem that's causing Msgsrv32 to fail. So, along with exploring the Msgsrv32 links, I'd also suggest you remove (uninstall) your printer software and drivers, then download fresh, new copies of the drivers and software from the HP site ( http://www.hp.com/country/us/eng/support.html ) , and reinstall that, too.

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Dear Fred,  In your column at http://www.informationweek.com/936/langa.htm , and specifically regarding Eudora, you write, "I've written a series of scripts and small programs that parse some Eudora mailboxes to extract specific information I'm looking for."

I've used Eudora ever since college (I'm 37 now), have tried other e-mail clients (Outlook Express, Outlook, etc.) and have always returned to Eudora. However I wish it would automatically archive my e-mail .mbx files in some way. I'm not sure how, but I'd like it to archive my e-mail. Could you tell me more about your scripts and small programs? Thanks again, Hans Schmidt

You can do it with scripts or batch files, but that's actually not the key. The core idea is this: The Eudora mailbox folders are basically just giant plain-text files, so you can copy and archive them with any standard file-management tool.

Here's how: First, clean up the mail folders. In Eudora, open whatever folder you want to archive, and delete any emails you don't need to save. Then, in the "Special" menu, Empty the trash and Compact the mailboxes. Exit Eudora.

In Windows Explorer or File Manager, go to the Eudora folder, copy whatever mailbox folders (the mbx files) you just cleaned up to whatever folder you want to use as the archive destination. Once copied to the new destination, you can zip-compress the mbx files (they typically compress to 50% of their original size) or otherwise do what you want to them.

Once your files have been copied and archived this way, you can then fire up Eudora and delete/empty/compress the original mailboxes. That's it; you're done!

If you ever need to restore the archived mail, shut down Eudora. UnZip or un-archive the MBX file, give it a new, unique name, copy it to the Eudora folder, and then restart Eudora. It will see the "new" MBX file and automatically generate a table of contents for it. You can then use it in the normal way, searching for and even replying to the once-archived mails just as if they'd never left your inbox.

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Hi Fred, I saw the tip in your ezine that references our article about customizing the places bar. Thanks for linking to our article! ( http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=133 )

So I thought I'd share another sneaky tip that doesn't involve messing with the registry. You just put shortcuts inside the default Windows folders. I never use the My Documents folder, for example, except to add shortcuts to other places. Here's a link to an article that explains the process: http://www.logicaltips.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=249  --- Susan Daffron, Editor, Computor Companion magazine

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We've discussed "PopFile" several times before ( http://www.google.com/search?as_q=popfile&as_sitesearch=langa.com) --- it's an antispam tool based on intelligent, statistical analysis of email rather than crude, brute force black lists and such.

Frequent contributor Robert Perry ( http://favoriteshomepage.com ) writes of a PopFile-related development:

Hi Fred, I've been using PopFile for several months now, and it's the best anti-spam tool I've come across to date. The Bayesian approach is definitely the way to go.

My only gripe with PopFile has been it's lack of integration with Microsoft Outlook and the inconvenience of having to start two programs to get my e-mail. Well, my problem has been solved by A. Ghandhi with his elegant and free Outlook component Outclass. Here's the author's description of Outclass:

"Outclass Mail Classification for Outlook with POPFile: Outclass provides POPFile's functionality natively to Outlook. What does this mean? It means that you can use the power of POPFile to classify any email you receive using Microsoft Outlook. This includes IMAP-based email and Exchange-based email as well as any other types that may be supported via Office add-ins (theoretically, anyway). Outclass has been tested with Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002 using Exchange, POP3, and IMAP mail, on Windows 2000 and Windows XP and with POPFile v0.18.1. Outclass can manually handle Hotmail accounts in Outlook 2002, but does not automatically classify Hotmail email at this time."

By the way, I've tested Outclass in Windows 98 with Outlook 2000, and it works great! Here's the website: http://www.vargonsoft.com/Outclass/

Sincerely, Robert Perry

Thanks, Robert!

Please excuse Tommy for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea and his boots leak.

Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust.

Please excuse Jimmy for being. It was his fathers fault.

Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.

Sally won't be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral.

My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the Marines.

Please excuse Mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps.

Gloria was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover.

Please excuse Burma, she has been sick and under the doctor.

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