Odds and ends to clean up before summer break

By Peter Vogel

In response to my recent piece on the need to back up data, reader Jack Hille has written to describe some of his efforts to keep his computer purring and his data safe.

"For backup I purchased an external hard drive; shopped around and found one at Office Depot for $79, brand name Acomdata 250 GB, 7200 Rpm. It's probably more that I'll ever use. The CD (accompanying backup software) is good for three computers.

"Another item I purchased and find very useful is a registry cleaner. The one I bought is called Registry Mechanic www.pctools.com. You pay a yearly fee of $40 and you can schedule it for automatic daily scanning."

If you prefer a free registry cleaner you might want to go with CCleaner, frequently mentioned in this space. It is available on numerous sites. Try www.download.com or the File Hippo site www.filehippo.com. CCleaner does not have a scheduling option, but it can be set to run on computer startup.

File Hippo offers up-to-date downloads for about 100 common applications. A small update file checker which can be downloaded provides a convenient way to quickly check, in one fell swoop, many of the utility programs you likely have installed on your computer.

I've made mention a couple of times in recent years of my favourite password manager, a small program with the interesting name Oubliette (French speakers will recognize the verb oublier, to forget, in the name). Unfortunately Oubliette's developer has moved on to other projects and the program is no longer available.

Last week I ran across an online password manager, Passpack, at www.passpack.com. With Oubliette I was pretty much restricted to the machine where I had the application installed, although I could have installed it on a USB flash drive with a bit of work.

Passpack and Oubliette both use advanced encryption schemes to store data. Such data is "packed" with a key known only to the end user. Not only can you store user IDs and passwords, but there are also free-form fields suitable for anecdotal notes. You can also add descriptive tags; these come in handy when you are searching for a specific account later on.

Passpack is completely free for up to 100 records. Actually the limit is determined by the size of a small text file that stores the data. The Passpack web site suggests the limit will typically fall in the 75-100 range. Subscription rates for usage over the limit have not yet been posted.

Give it a try. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the sophistication of the product.

If you can't resist free software then Giveaway of the Day might be for you. The site, www.giveawayoftheday.com, has quite an unusual approach to the distribution of software for third parties. Such software is offered one item per day. The item must be downloaded and activated within the 24-hour period that it is made available. Don't bother downloading today, thinking you'll get around to installing tomorrow. The activation key won't work "tomorrow."

You might wonder why a company would give its software to the Giveaway people, even for just one day. It helps create a bit of a buzz for the product and it might be a means of promoting other titles from the same producer. In recent days I've seen several items that would otherwise sell in the $50-100 range offered on the site.

If manipulating photographs is your cup of tea you might be interested in the completely free PhotoScape product available through download.com (go to www.download.com and enter PhotoScape in the search box). Highly rated by both site editors and the public, PhotoScape handles a broad range of viewing, editing, batch editing, and image-manipulation features. For instance, it can be used to create image collages that fit a broad variety of templates, or to add cartoon-like overlays to photographs.

Lastly, our digital cameras sales list web site is getting its summer overhaul. Check it out at www.ndrs.org/iol/cameras.htm. If you've recently purchased a new digital camera drop me a note so that I might include your particular model in the list. Cameras in the 8- and 10-megapixel categories seem to be driving the market this summer. Big LCD displays along with face detection and image stabilization technologies are the most common features in the present crop of digicams.