Feedback Form

Handy Recovery Software

July 5th, 2007 by

Few days back we got hand on software called Handy Recovery, and decided to test it. Here as the name suggest, it’s not one of those big software which take control of your PC and make it slow. The work of recovery software is to recover data from disk if it gets deleted or corrupt (not readable). Floppies as we all know are the most unreliable for storing data, so we decided to use it for the test. If it can recover data fron this, it will recover from any other disk easily.

I used a 4 year old floppy from an unknown manufacturer that came with a joystick and the driver; this floppy had bad sectors too. This is going to be a hard time for Handy Recovery. Let’s begin the test:

Step 1: I copied some files of various types like image, notepad, excel, pdf, video, mp3, word, compressed zip file etc which are the commonly stored file types on normal PC user. Then I deleted it by pressing shift button so that nothing goes to recycle bin and gets deleted permanently.
  
Step 2: Now I scanned this floppy with handy recovery to see if I can get my deleted files back. Here you can see in the screenshot, all the deleted files were detected. However they are detected only and not recovered yet. Recovered files can be restored on another disk also for safety reason; I used "D:/Recovered Files" as the default location for all my restored files.
Step 3: As you can see a question mark “?” before some file names, it happens when the software is not able to recover file names, in that case it prompt us to rename it while recovering, else it automatically replace those “?” with  “_” . Recovering files was quite fast considering slow speed of floppy drive and took not more than a minute. All the files were successfully recovered!

Pros: Affordable data recovery software that works.

Cons: Was not able to recover file from formatted disk.

Note: This is not a sponsored post.
Posted in Software No Comments »

Spyware Terminator

June 25th, 2007 by

spyware terminator  
New free antispyware software is here and it claims to be the terminator! It looks similar to Ad-aware and its scan results are very much similar to it, but Spyware Terminator has functions like Real time protection which Ad-aware doesn’t offer in free version. We tested it in three system already loaded with nod32 antivirus and WindowsXp SP2 with all the latest updates.During the install it offered a web security guard
which is actually like a toolbar working real time preventing you from entering a potentially dangerous website, which is quite a good as mostly these spywares get installed at once as you enter such malicious websites. If you feel like you have got a hell good software, all your expectations break when you see the next screen, it ask to install Crawler Toolbar, a search engine (found safe) and also ask your permission to make it the default search engine and your home page!
This looks malicious but since you can reject these during install, I moved to next screen. You will be surprised (and can laugh) to see it now giving an antivirus package too!
  antispyware software

Here we rejected it too as the main purpose was to test the antispyware, not antivirus. At last the installation is finished and I got a really nice looking software on my screen, updated it and it was a breeze. Before I began to do scan I found that the toolbar is actually installed since I selected the web security guard, I hate these toolbars as it’s a useless waste of productive space on computer. You can turn it off though but the question is when I don’t want it why it gets installed? It can be justified because the company offering software for free wants some favor in return like donation etc and in this case they want to popularize their search engine. First quick scan didn’t detect anything harmful, so was the full scan result. Unlike other antispyware this one is made more like an antivirus programs, for e.g., you can scan any particular file from right click menu which is useful in case one find a file looking suspicious, he can scan it immediately. A good thing that I found that being a graphic rich eye candy looking software with lots of features; it consumes very less memory as is not heavy on system at all.
Pros: Nice interface, Real time protection and lots of other features.
Cons: Threats detection rate is that good.

Verdict:
People may uninstall each and every other antispyware they have and use this one but geeks may still stick to good old Spybot.
Posted in Software No Comments »

Web Conferencing software

June 8th, 2007 by

web conferencing

Mobile phones, email, messenger, all these services have made our life easier as we don’t need to be physically at same place to talk. This saves a lot of time and money as well. Video conferencing is a step ahead and makes live even more easier and speeds up the work, it do wonders to any business because time is money and it just saves time, lots of time indeed in some cases. Think of your client is in another country, your business partner and other members are somewhere else enjoying and you want to hold an urgent meeting, what you will do? Give a call and call them back to work, then get the tickets and arrange meeting! Phew too long and waste of money, it can be done in very easy and cost effective way by just using a web conferencing software. Let all the people be where they are, what they need is a computer/laptop with internet connection to attend the meeting.
Read more on “Web Conferencing software” »

Posted in Software No Comments »

Panda is after rootkits !

May 30th, 2007 by

rootkit remover

What are rootkits? There are many explanations but what I need to say it’s more troublesome than any virus or Trojan! Why? Because it’s not detected by any antivirus software (some AV like nod32 are able to detect few of them) and cause major damage to your computer. My computer has been infected twice and inspite of best antivirus and fully updated windows what solution left to me was to format the hard disk! This is painful for people like me who have lots of important stuff lying here and there in many folders. Today I was surfing and found this software by Panda which claims to remove rootkits, although there are many small utilities and antivirus already available but I know they fail to detect any rootkit when we actually get infected. I will not say that this software does a good job as I have not tested it but since it’s from a trustable company and mainly focus on rootkit removal, it may do the trick. This is a small app (only 996kb) and does not need to be installed, runs directly from single exe file. Neat !!

Download Panda Anti-Rootkit
Size : 353Kb (.zip)

Posted in Software No Comments »

Hassle free eCommerce solutions

May 23rd, 2007 by

ashop

If you ask your neighborhood shop keeper how much it cost him to maintain his shop you will be surprised. You will never bargain on price with him again! A typical shop always needs to be on a commercial area to do a good and legal business, also if he rented the shop he has to pay for the space on monthly basis which is quite good amount of money. This is not an end, he has to maintain stock plus spend thousands on maintenance and more miscellaneous expenses. This is where internet helps you to sell your product easily. How? You must have seen websites selling stuff on their websites and are doing quite good. These are websites powered by ecommerce software which enabled you to add shopping cart in a website. These sites are often called online shops. If you plan to open shop, think of risk free Shopping cart software based online shop which will be both affordable and faster. Think of a shop on a street, who are the buyers? Mostly people who are in that area right? And your online shop is open for the whole world to visit, look what you have and buy. What’s more you can ask for, but there is always more, Shopping cart software based sites work for your 24/7 , even while you are sleeping, your shop is open and doing business.
So how we get these websites? Contacting a web agency and asking them to make a online shop for you is what people mostly do, its fine but you end up paying huge money for a site which looks clone of some other website since all these websites are based on ecommerce software like oscommerce which is the most popular one. I will definitely not suggest anyone serious with ecommerce site to use oscommerce because it has lots of loopholes and bugs, it doesn’t even have password protect for admin panel which needs to be added later and all together its not reliable software as its coded badly (proof : it require register_globals on). Also if you don’t have some knowledge of html, you are not able to maintain site yourself and always need someone to do it for you (less privacy and waste of money) so will you like to opt for some option which gives you total freedom to create your own online store with thousands of features and is also easy to use? Ashop provide Shopping cart software which will let you do so in minutes and you can start selling right now. Maintaining shopping cart was never so easy before, they offer fully customizable design for your store so that your site doesn’t look clone of some other site (which creates bad reputation) at affordable rates. With the use of ashop hosted shopping cart software you don’t need to have any knowledge of html or graphics, it’s as easy as writing emails. In cause however if you ever need any help there is always free tech support (phone, email, online chat) always ready to help you, great ! Isn’t it?
If you are still not convinced let me show you some more benefit, ether you have been in ecommerce field or not, you know that no one trust a shopping site which doesn’t have secured connecection or SSL (https://), ashop offers this for free, if you go to buy SSL certificate, it doesn’t come cheap. At this point if you feel that yes there is something good here something more, as I said above, an online shop is open for whole world, but this is true only when people reach your site, to make this possible ashop stores are Search engine optimised so that more people reach your site through search engines like google, yahoo etc,
So if have something to sell and planning to open a store, think of an online store. To see demo of ashop admin and storefront, click here.

Posted in Software No Comments »

Spybot Search & Destroy

May 17th, 2007 by

antispyware software best thenetguruz approved

So what’s new about this software? We all know it’s good. I call this software as “king” of free security softwares because it was a king always but we never knew. New software comes in market and you cannot say its good just because some so called gurus of net said that it’s good. You have to test and compare it.
It has been years using this software and trust me Spybot never returned empty handed whenever I scanned my PC in case of any trouble. I will not mention name here but most popular free security software which most of you must be having deserves uninstalling right now! Few days back some nasty Trojan and Spyware managed to enter my PC and my antivirus software didn’t detected it.
Read more on “Spybot Search & Destroy” »

Posted in Software 2 Comments »