E-Musings Mon Immorata

Every summer words move through my sub-conscious like slow hot molasses. Outside it's how enough to fry and egg. Literally. I gotta drive with gloves on cos' the steering wheel's too hot to handle. And the gear-shift knob's near melting too. Along with all the other plastic surfaces. In the equatorial tropics never drive in shorts if you have vinyl seat covers: the burn is terrible! But enough of my driving woes. It's too hot to venture outside, so let's do some surfing instead.

Virus-wise there's little happening. The old like Klez see an upsurge in infections reported every odd month. Making May hotter in more ways than one! Anyway, except for a low-grade Kazaa worm there's little to fear. I actually hope none of my reader even use Kazaa. Not because it's an MP3 file-sharing tool. But because it's so damned unsafe. The software contains so many tracking and information sharing utilities that by installing it you are definitely giving personal privacy a go-bye.

Instead check out Kazaa Lite aka K-Lite (3 MB, Windows, free) is a cleaned up, freeware version of the original Kazaa Media Desktop P2P (Peer-to-Peer) file sharing application. With K-Lite you can still share media. The software also connects to FastTrack's P2P network system (which iMesh, Grokster and Kazaa Media also support).

You can download single files from multiple users and even resume broken and suspended downloads. K-Lite also removes bit rate limits and other restrictons that the full version imposes on users. Read about K-Lite's full feature list here. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

How many times in the recent past have you whined for an older version of a particular software? This usually sparks off a frenetic search for an older version -- through your CD-R collection, your local downloads folder, on the Web. In no particular order. And yet there are so many reasons for using older versions. Either because newer builds are inadequately tested and crash. Or are inherently buggy. Or a combination of both. Either way, it's terrible to have software that refuses to work like its immediate predecessors. Or worse: breaks your computer!

That's where Oldversion -- which sells itself as "because newer is not always better" comes in handy! This excellent place has on an average versions going back 3-4 generations: equivalent to nearly a half-century in human terms! And What's available is exceedingly diverse.

You can locate earlier builds of apps like ACDSee, Acrobat Reader, Ad-aware, America Online (AOL) browser and Instant Messenger (AIM), BulletProof FTP, CloneCD, CompuServe Browser, CuteMX, DC++, DirectX, DivX, Eudora, Express WebPictures, GetRight, GoZilla, ICQ, Internet Explorer, Juno, Kazaa, LimeWire, mIRC, Morpheus, MSN Messenger, MusicMatch Jukebox, Napster, Nero Burning ROM, Opera, PowerArchiver, QuickTime, RealJukebox, RealOne Player, RealPlayer, Scour Exchange, Swish, Terragen, VirtualDub, Winamp, Windows Media Player, WinMX, WinRAR, WinZip, Yahoo Messenger, ZoneAlarm.

Each software has a page listing the developer's URL, name, and the current version. This is followed by description of the utility. And any sub-versions. As well as alternates. There's even a discussion board. This is probably one of the best software sites on the Internet. Oldversion isn't a hacker's paradise. But you can download copies of older software for which hacks are available on the Web.

Us laptop users face a problem with multiple network connections. One solution is to use multiple, customized profiles. But it can become a pain after a while. Enter Mobile Net Switch. This shareware helps you customize your network settings to support multiple profiles. So you can have one for the office. One for home (for that cable Internet connection). One for the road. One perhaps for every branch office.

This settings manager even restores mapped drives, resets IP addresses, connects to the right Web proxy server (or none). And best of all works any version of Windows that includes support for Windows Media Installer (WMI). Go get a copy for yourself as soon as possible.

The best, and freest CD player (with included FreeDB support) has just been updated. NotifyCD v1.60 Beta16 is now available. The code base has been considerably tweaked. And its memory footprint is an awesomely tiny 1.2 MB! There's no change in the feature set.

In other Beta news, something I mentioned on April 21, 2002 about possible issues of the Firebird (nee Phoenix) web browser versus the Firebird SQL database have come to the fore! In what I see as a very Netscape-like confused gesture, the little browser that would changed its name. Then rolled back change after the database developers dug in their heels.

From a user perspective the name war reveals other chinks. The browser-that-used-to-be-Phoenix is fast becoming bloat ware. Its zipped file now clocks in at 6.5 MB and includes that stupid Talkback utility. This supposedly notifies the developers of app crashes. Yeah! And what about my privacy! I'm so disgusted after following the app closely in the past that I've removed it altogether from my system. Instead I'm sticking with Opera 7, MyIE2, and good old IE6 SP1.

Opera's released v7.11 just as this column went to press. I haven't had a chance to download and check out what's new under the 'hood. But there must be a slew of tweaks. The proposed Opera 7.20 Beta is supposed to include ActiveX support. If it does, then OPera can truly take IE on head-to-head. But all those extra features like MDI, tabbed windows, better personalization, notes, integrated intelligent download client, et al are nullified by an inability to render pages with embedded ActiveX objects.

That's about all I can manage this week. Have fun!!!

G Menon Click Here to Email Me