Free software 8: Tux racer

Are you still driving your favourite car in the Need for speed? Why not try something new?

Tux Racer is a best choice (of course it is free ;P). In Tux Racer, you control a Linux Penguin to race in steep, snow-covered mountains. You need to slide as fast as possible, at the same time, catch ferring as much as you can.

Moreover, you can change the race conditions such as introducing fog, changing from day time to night time, or racing under high winds. Of course, you can create new courses.

The official website is http://tuxracer.sourceforge.net/.

© Wenbin

Free software 7: Active Virus Shield

Update: this software is not available any more.

This software is no longer available in the AOL website.

Active Virus Shield is an antivirus software provided by AOL with one-year free subscription. It is powered by Kaspersky Lab, which is a largest, fastest anti-virus providers worldwide. Kaspersky updates their virus definitions every 2 hours.

This antivirus software contains an extended antivirus databases currently contain 232322 records that aims at adwares, remote administration programs, utilities which can be used by malicious programs or users. It doesn't slow down your computer like Norton antivirus does, and more efficient than Norton, because it can detect much more viruses and malicious programs.

My friend installed it after my recommendation several months ago, he is satisfied with it and it is working well. The download page is http://www.activevirusshield.com/antivirus/freeav/index.adp, you need to provide a valid email address to receive the activation code. By the way, if your Active Virus Shield expires in the future and Active Virus Shield is still free of charge, it is easy to apply for a new active code.

Active Virus Shield Feature Summary

• New Threat Response Time of up to 2 hours
• Real-Time Protection
• On-Demand and Scheduled Scanning
• Disinfects Files in Archives (ZIP, ARJ, CAB, RAR, LHA)
• Option to Scan Only New And Modified Files
• Harmful Program Blocking And Removal
• Disinfect SMTP, IMAP4 & POP3 Email
• Variable Scan Speed
• Help Prevent Slowdown During Increased Computer Usage Periods
• Support Power Saving for Laptops
• Support Microsoft Windows XP x64

© Wenbin

Free software 6: PDFsam

PDFsam is an application for PDF split and merge. Compared with PDFtools introduced in the previous post, it cannot be considered as a multi-functional tool.

However, as indicated in the picture, PDFsam supports mergence of several PDF pages from PDF documents. Although you can achieve this aim by splitting the PDF files first, it really rescues you out from lots of trouble, especially when you have to join a number parts of PDF documents.

You can download this program at http://pdfsam.sourceforge.net/.

© Wenbin

Free software 5: PDFTools

PDFTools is a versatile PDF management application. It helps you encrypt, decrypt, join, split, stamp, create and rearrange a PDF file. In the PDF creater, it includes a very powerful and simple converter to translate XML to PDF.

Its encryption module allows to modify the permission of a great range with the strength of 128 bit or 40 bit. The other tools are qutie easy to use and powerful too.

However, its PDF merge module joins individual PDF documents only, i.e. it cannot join several pages of a PDF document and others together. Therefore, you have to split the PDF first, then join them. This last paragraph sounds waste, everyone in the Earth knows it. OK, I admit that I will introduce another FREE PDF split and merge tool which can do it. So, see you next time. By the way, PDFTools' official website and download page is http://www.sheelapps.com/.

© Wenbin

Free software 4: SwizzTool

SwizzTool is a multi-functional alarm clock. It supports six kinds of alarms: countdown, date and time, day and time, date, time, day. Compared with Citrus Alarm Clock , it is much powerful. However, it supports .wav format audio only, which means you have to convert your audios if you want to hire your favourite music as the alarm audio.

Moreover, with SwizzTool, you can creat tasks to run, set up hotkeys and fill up your memos. The official website and download page is http://www.specop.se/. Version 4 consists of 7 languages. (The picture used in this post comes from the official website.)

Next post is the FREE PDF split and merge tools time.
© Wenbin

Free software 3: Citrus Alarm Clock

When you search google and yahoo with keywords 'alarm clock', Citrus Alarm Clock is one of the top 3 results.

You can set as many different alarms as you like, such as afternoon tea, ice cream time. The exciting is that you can use your existing media files such as MP3, WMA and any other media types supported by your media players. Furthermore, you even can set fade in your alarm audio! (Be sure that close the setting window when you want it to work properly ;P). However, it cannot send you alarms along with countdown time. Anyway, you can calculate time to achieve this goal. The official website and download page is http://www.ornj.net/citrus/ (the picutures in this post come from the offical website).

Next time, I will bring you another FREE alarm clock, which is more powerful but alarm audio.

© Wenbin

Get rid of IVI virtual DVD driver

After uninstalling InterVideo DVD copy, a DVD drive called IVI virtual DVD ROM will remain in your system like a ghost. Now, it is time to get rid of it.

1. Go to Control Panel, double click on the System icon, select Hardware tab, open Device Manager;
2. In the branch of DVD/CD-ROM drives, disable the IVI virtual DVD Driver;
3. Under SCSI and RAID controller, disable the IVI SCSI controller;
4. Uninstall the IVI VIRTUALDRI SCSI controller (right click on it and select uninstall);
5. Restart your computer;
6. Finally, your computer is clean....

Free software 2: VirtuaWin - Virtual desktops

VirtuaWin is a software of multi-virtual desktops in windows OS. Compared with the virtual desktop software by Microsoft, it is simple, powerful, fast and it is easy to configure (it is obvious that Microsoft always creats some rubbish softwares). The official website is http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtuawin, and you can download it at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=39588.

© Wenbin

Free software 1: LClock

LClock is a FREE Win32/64 Longhorn (now it is Vista) systray clock program. It is modified based on Kazuto Sato's TClock Light (software in Japanese ) and comes with a calendar (ideas from Rainlendar). This is a tiny simple program but meets most people's basic needs. More information is available at http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=157465, and download page is http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1092761816/1.