Registry Booster saved my computer!

When using registry cleaners, you really gotta be careful. It can be a little dangerous as they have the potential to delete things they shouldn’t, potentially really messing things up. Registry Booster is another registry cleaning program, but its not ju-u-u-ust another registry cleaning program! It seems to be a very safe one that knows what its doing! Unlike the vast majority of others!

It claims to be “the safest and most trusted solution to clean and optimize your system, free it from registry errors and fragmented entries through Advanced Error Detection Technology”. But I still recommend you create a system restore point before using software like this though! Just in case (better be safe then sorry)! As added protection, the program can also fully undo any changes it makes.

I have good faith in this program as it really saved my computer a few weeks ago when nothing else I tried would help at all (including some other popular registry cleaners). I was having some issues with my computer crashing just after start up and I tried a couple of different registry cleaners and this was the only one that totally fixed it. Everything was back to normal after i ran it. So now me and registry booster are pretty much the best of friends! If you check the homepage,you’ll see it received a bunch of awards, so i guess there might be something to it and i didn’t just get lucky!

Although someone else’s system may not react as positively as mine did. So make sure you know what you’re doin’ and do so at your own risk!

You can get more info here.

Zonealarm: Free Firewall

It’s pretty essential that every computer that’s connected to the internet has a firewall to protect it from hackers. Without this, it’s like having a house with all the doors and windows open.

“But why would anyone want to hack me?” i hear you say. Well these days hackers use tools that can scan hundreds of IP-addresses, just looking for the unprotected computers.The built in windows firewall, while being better than nothing, only offers one way protection. Malicious programs such as trojans or adware can still “call home”. and i’m pretty sure you don’t want them sending back your personal details or credit card number!

Zonealarm is a very well known firewall thats been around for many years now. While the paid versions include such extras as antivirus,antispyware and more, all necessary things these days, they still offer a free version of their basic firewall.

It’s pretty easy to have decent computer security on a low budget or even on no budget at all! In that case I recommend a free firewall such as this one, along with good free antispyware and antivirus programs that have a proven record in doing their job well (Some of which are mentioned in my previous reviews).

Go here to download zonealarm or to find out about what the paid versions offer.

Trillian: All in one chat client

Wouldn’t it be great if you could have just one program for talking to all your Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, AOL messenger and/or ICQ buddies with? Time to check out trillian!

Trillian allows all this, in a skinnable client that can be customized to be pretty cool (if you’re into that kinda thing). There’s some skins available from here and most skinning sites. If you wanna get a little more technical, you can even change things such as which emoticons to use (I have mine set up to use the default emotion sets of each. So that i see them just as if i was using the official messenger client, msn, yahoo, etc). It also supports plug-ins for various functions. Oh yeah, you’ll also never have to see those annoying little ads the official chat clients sometimes have running in them.

Its available in both free and pro versions, there’s not a lot of difference really except for video chat in pro and some advance features that you’ll rarely use.

It can be a bit confusing at first but you soon get used to it after a while. Its slightly more suitable for advanced users who like to customize their computers as much as possible and have everything matching their themes or color schemes. But for anyone who runs multiple chat clients and wants something a little slicker than the official ones (and all in one program) it’s still worth checking out.

Check out www.ceruleanstudios.com for more info.

Ffdshow: On with the show!

At some stage, you’ve probably tried to view a video file and it hasn’t worked properly. Maybe you get sound and no picture, or maybe just nothing at all. One way to fix this is to download a codec pack, containing many different codecs for playing back the various video file formats.This can lead to more problems as there are are so many different codecs for different video formats and it can lead to things getting very messy on your computer with incompatibilities, codecs conflicting with each other, etc.

Sometimes even then, the file type you were trying to view still won’t work anyway! Wouldn’t it be great if there was a better way? Enter Ffdshow! Ffdshow is designed to work as an all in one “multi purpose codec”.

It’s a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing all the main video file formats including DivX, XviD, WMV, MPEG-1, and MPEG-2 and AVI movies (Translation for non-computer nerds: It makes your video files play properly). So simply put, if you are having trouble playing a video file, you should download and install this and then everything should play just fine!

If you don’t believe me, a quick search online will show a lot of people singing the praises of Ffdshow, (but if it still does work, don’t shoot the messenger! In that case i recommend you uninstall any codec packs you may have tried and then try this again). Get the free download of the latest version by going here.

Speedtest.net: Is your connection up to speed?

Ever wondered if your Internet connection speed even comes close to what you pay for each month? I do! So i was happy when i found Speedtest.net, a cool looking site where you can choose from a selection of servers around the world and check your upload and download speed.

I kinda felt like i was planning for nuclear war with the flashy graphics, luckily for us all, i wasn’t!

It’s a cool site to go to if you wanna check just how fast your connection is going. See if it’s as fast as your provider claims, although results can vary at different times due to internet conditions.

It’s also a handy and useful tool for anyone who does things such as internet gaming,where having a fast speed is necessary for some games.

Speed on over to the site to check it out.

Real Alternative: The real alternative to Realplayer

Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia and other multimedia files without having to install RealPlayer or RealOne Player (or whatever its called this week!) from Real Networks. The offical real networks player has taken a bad rap in recent years for its in-player advertising methods. A quick search online will show that it has more than just a little bad press when it comes to that.

So if you wanna avoid all that, but still be sure your computer can play real networks content and certain audio or video files, its well worth checking this out instead of the official one. It seems to do the exact same job, minus the unwanted features (or in many peoples opinions, more like “adware” disguised as features). From my experience of using this, it seems to get the job done. It plays the required audio or video,including embedded content, painlessly and unobtrusively.

As an added bonus, it comes with Media Player Classic, a lightweight alternative to Windows Media player, that can play just about anything you throw at it!

You can grab it for free here