sparx

I might be biased because of loyalty, but I do prefer Fastmail.fm. Although the storage quota is pitiful in this day [ 10 MB for free; 16 MB for $14.95 one-time payment ] and age, it's more than enough for daily communication. A very friendly user forum also is one of the major plus points. Also, a nifty email checker notifies me instantly when email arrives in any of my folders! It's interface and features are top-notch along with HTTPS support. I must however add that with it's recent increase to 2 GB, GMail is definitely my mail storage repository and my #2 / backup account.

Although this isn't free software, it's an extremely useful site Calendar Of Updates It's a calendar that lists updates for a wide variety of software as it becomes available or as per a pre-determined schedule. A must for the security conscious geek and the wide-eyed newbie. RSS feed here Membership is NOT required to view the calendar.

As someone else has already pointed Nero although bundled with many CD / DVD writers now-a-days isn't freeware. Alng the same line, I don't think the same can be said of FlashGet that has been posted in this thread earlier. In any case, I'd like to point out a completely free (albeit donationware) utility called Startup Control Panel . It's small light and is compatible with all flavours of Windows. Also, unlike msconfig, there are no annoying reminders on the next boot-up. It allows you to easily configure which programs run when your computer starts. That's it!

Most default shell icons are stored in %WinDir%\System32\shell32.dll 1. Create a shortcut (Right-click on desktop, select New > Shortcut). 2. For location, type the following: shutdown -r -t 0 3. Click Next, enter a name for the shortcut ("Restart" is appropriate), and click Finish. When you click your Restart shortcut, Windows XP will reboot without any prompts ! The "-r" switch tells XP to reboot. If you'd like the shortcut to shut off your PC instead, change it to "-s"; to simply log off, change it to "-l". The "-t 0" sets the timeout (in seconds), so up this value if you find the need for it. To force running applications to close, add "-f" -- be careful with this one! Anything in memory not saved to disk will be lost.

Next year, they'll be competing for "Best Album". Vertigo single was released in time for inclusion as a Grammy Nominee for 2005, but "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" will definitely make the cut for next year's Grammy awards.

Although this does fall into the category of image hosting, it isn't like the conventional host that most of us come to know and use... I'm talking about Hello . It's a Google backed software, so it integrates extremely well with other Google software like Picasa 2 and Blogger. Think of it more like an IM which allows easier sharing of pictures between your contacts. THe hitch is - your contact must use Hello too. The best reason to use it IMHO, would be its ability to quickly and easily upload images to your Blogger.com blog, so one can host pics and even allow people to comment on them if one so wishes. Give it a try... I'm quite happy with it !

As most of the people here have already suggested Mozilla Thundebird, I'd like to perhaps suggest something pertinent : Use profiles in conjunction with Profile Password extension. This will give each user privacy as well as the ability to choose and install relevant extensions as per their liking. Start TB with the Profile manager by entering this into the target field of the shortcut - (correct your own path please!) "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -ProfileManager Alternatively, if you've installed TB 1.0, check in the START MENU folder for a shortcut titled "Profile Manager"; run that and uncheck DON'T ASK AT STARTUP

Update ! There's a BETA extension available too for Thunderbird to allow downloading Hotmail / Yahoo. More details can be found in the Mozillazine forum here . IMHO, this might be better as you won't have to keep an app running all the time or remember to start / stop it when your client starts. Being an extension, it'll be integrated right into Thunderbird.

Have a look at this page here Lots of people use YahooPOPs (I don't have any need to...) so check the instuctions and make sure you're following them correctly. If others can, you ought to be able too... Anyway, there are other alternatives listed there, so give them a shot too.

Bluebottle.com250 MB MailboxPOP3 / IMAP4 / SMTP serverNO ADs on the website and in sent mail!Anti-virus protectionChallenge/Response Spam ProtectionAbility to pull messages from upto three external POP3 accounts and Hotmail (while the feature exists for free users till April according to MSN)

While some people recommend using GMail / Yahoo, I'd recommend using Bluebottle . It gives you 250 MB mailbox space, POP3 / IMAP4 / SMTP + No adverts but most importantly, it has a very nice and functional challenge/response system. This relies principally on the fact that most spam is sent out automatically via scripts or some program; the return address too are 99.99% fake. When Bluebottle gets new mail and the sender isn't in the ALLOWED list, a mail is sent back with instructions to reply back with your name in the subject line and/or addition of a 4 digit number of your choice. This ensures that only valid email sent by a human gets through. No Spam-bots allowed ! As a bonus, it can even retrieve email from external POP3 servers and Hotmail ! Cool Service !

Now this is really cool. Remember all suggestions are being made in near real-time! Google Suggest Fantastic. It's like Google with auto complete built right into it. I wonder if with features like this, they're making us users more lazy? FAQ for the site is available here.

CryptonX - Giant Anti Spyware is now Microsoft Anti-Spyware.I downloaded BETA 1 of MS Anti-Spyware and it worked very very well. I liked the scheduler and it's ability to restore IE's default search pages and settings if a hijack attempt has taken place.The ability to send info regarding false positives to the collaborative network called SpyNet is also a plus.All that remains to be seen is the pricing policy - because the software itself is a winner.I'm paranoid about Spyware & Net nasties so here's my defence lineZoneAlarm PRONAV 2005SpyBot S&D (with real time protection ON )Ad-Aware SESpyware Blaster (to protect from known bad ActiveX)MS Anti-Spyware (with real time protection ON)A fully plugged/updated Windows systemusing Firefox & Thunderbird instead of IE & OEand of course the jewel in the crownRoxio GoBack ( now Symantec GoBack, but I've got the older version) which allows me the comfort of a PC time-machine !

Strangely enough, I like both browsers although IE is far more usable with a shell like Maxthon. WRT the resource usage being higher with Firefox, I'll agree to that point.I had read once though that the real reason IE was so speedy was because a lot of its core code is already in memory when Windows boots up. That's how it's so tightly integrated with the OS. I mean, you type in a URL in Windows Explorer and the window changes to Internet Explorer! Still, expect the bad guys to start targetting Firefox / Thunderbird as their popularity grows too. It's inevitable.

I'm using Leechget 2004. I've found that most D/L manager have the same features like scheduled downloading, splitting files into pieces for faster downloading, categorizing downloads etc.I like Leechget mainly because it *is* freeware - no ADs, no nag screens, decent functionality, pretty interface( sue me, I like looks ;-) !) and after downloading it has an option to keep the download window open. This is useful so I can open the downloaded file. I know there are options to automatically open the downloaded file, but in that case, the download opens before my virus scanner can scan the file.As things stand, LeechGet downloads the file, sends it to my virus scanner and waits patiently before I decide whether or not to open the file.

I use X-Setup . It's got a little descriptive panel and a search function which is a boon for when you remember what you want changed but don't know the exact name! Using it with "Record Mode" also allows you to roll back changes and if you want to use that particular tweak on another machine, creates a specific .REG registry file which can be merged later on.

There's a good reason why U2 currently are considered to be the biggest band in the world today. My personal opinion is that they have tried so many different styles over the years and have succeeded in creating something unique each time - good music.That might seem a bit corny, but it is true. When they released POP - mst people just hated it - but it really wasn't a bad album, there certainly were good songs in that package. I suppose today's generation has grown accustomed to the middle-age rockers belting out "Beautiful Day" & "Vertigo" but I feel the definitive U2 album would be "The Joshua Tree".Anyway, yeojingkai - I highly recommend listening to "Joshua Tree" which has hits like "With Or Without You", "Where The Streets Have No Name" & "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".

Hi everyone ! I've been trying out Omnilect which offers 2 GB of space and other stuff like bookmarks, tasks and a calendar. The interface isn't all that good, but one can make it work... However, the hosting and file storage let it down ( at least, at the time of writing this ). It's difficult to link to files that are stored within an account so you can't share your files with others easily. However for personal storage, it works just fine. There are support forums, but not too active, unfortunately. IMO, this service needs to improve considerably and if I was a betting man, I'd say it will. Regards, Sparx