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Free Software Downloads |
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| Useful fast & free software that you didn't know about. |
http://batterycare.bkspot.com/en/index.html
Batterycare is a simple application designed for laptops and notebooks to manage and inform you about your battery usage. It also provides recommendations on when you should perform a battery discharge cycle. |
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http://www.tidysongs.com/
Do you have a large digital music collection that has a lot of missing information or artwork? Or perhaps it's just littered all over your hard drive in a big mess. TidySongs is an app which manages your collection and fills in missing data such as artists, albums, or genres. |
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http://pidgin.im/
Pidgin is a small and lightweight multi-platform instant messaging program. It supports a wide range of chat networks such as MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, IRC, Yahoo, and so on. Best thing is, you only need this one client rather than having all the others logged on all at the same time (which takes up precious resource usage!). |
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http://www.windowslive.com/Desktop/MovieMaker
Windows Live Movie Maker is the updated version Microsoft's Movie Maker software that you always see bundled with XP and Vista. This new version sports Microsoft's infamous "ribbon" toolbar menu system (as with most of their newer software) and now also supports things like high definition video and built in tools for uploading videos. Live Movie Maker is available for Vista and Windows 7 only. |
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Website Watch |
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Free-OCR
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http://www.free-ocr.com/
Free-OCR.com is a free online OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool. You can use this to change and of your scanned documents into normal text. The service is free however there is a limitation to the amount of OCR you can perform per hour.
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Playlist
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http://www.playlist.com/
Playlist.com is a website dedicated to share and discover new music with other users. The site focuses on free music made available online by artists and allows you to stream the music via their built-in player.
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Techie Tips |
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Often when you have internet troubles, you may hear our support team or your techie mates telling you to do "ping tests" to certain addresses. A ping test is basically your computer attempting to say "Hi" to another. This month we will have a look at how to do some basic troubleshooting using the ping test.
There are several main points of connectivity between you and the internet and it looks something like this:
PC > Modem/router > TPG > Internet
Each of these points has an address in which it can be located and by pinging each one of them, you can find out which part of the link is broken. To do a ping test in Windows, open up your command prompt by pressing Windows key + R and enter "cmd" into the box. Once you have the command prompt open (the ugly looking black window), just type in the ping command followed by an address. Eg. "ping www.google.com"
Here are some examples of the addresses you may need:
PC: "127.0.0.1" - If you cannot ping this address then there may be a problem with your network card or the drivers associated with the network card.
Modem/router: 192.168.1.1 - this is the most common address for modems and routers but may also have slight variations such as 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.254. If pinging your modem/router fails, then your modem or router may have crashed and will need a powercycle.
TPG: www.tpg.com.au or 203.12.160.35 (TPG's DNS server) - If you have gotten this far but cannot ping TPG, this could mean that you are connected, but there is no dataflow. This is usually caused by an outage or a line fault.
Internet: Basically pinging any website will give you an informative result, for example if you are able to ping www.google.com but cannot view the website in a browser, it could mean that you are connected to the internet but your browser is not responding to any requests or something is blocking it such as a firewall. |
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FAQ of the month |
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How can I make my wireless computer connection secured and what type of security option is recommended?
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It is safe to say that all wireless routers comes with security features, and in most cases security turned on by default. The security is implemented by using encryption or transforming the information to make it is unreadable, except for those possessing an ‘encryption key’.
Wireless routers purchased from TPG are enabled with WPA-PSK, on the latest security settings for wireless. Early this year, we have opted to use WPA-PSK because it has extra-strong encryption where keys are automatically changed and authenticated between devices after a specified period of time. WPA-PSK is far superior to WEP (which uses same key every time) and provides stronger protection for the home user. The process used to generate the encryption key is very rigorous (256-bit) and the re keying (or key changing) is done very quickly. Since TPG routers are already enabled with WPA-PSK encryption, all you have to do is to plug it in and check your e-mail for additional info.
Alternatively you can check the set-up guide that came with the router package, which gives the specific information about it, and how you can set it up.
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Jargon Buster |
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Here are some terms you may be unfamiliar with found on the TPG website.
Static IP address - if your plan has a static IP address, this means that every time your modem connects to the internet it will be assigned the same IP address.
Dynamic IP address - if your plan has a dynamic IP address, this means that every time your modem connects, you will be assigned a different IP address.
Soft phone - A soft phone is basically the same as regular VOIP except everything is done through software on your PC. You can listen and talk through your computer speakers and microphone.
DNS - Domain Name Server, This is the service that translates website addresses into their IP address counterpart.
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