Monday, November 27, 2000		Downloads of the week

No need to download and use different types of music players as you can now download a single feature-packed and value added Windows Media Player 7.0 from http://www.microsoft.com. Till now, Windows media player was lacking in features and had limited features, which made it imperative for music lovers to try and use several types of music players. These players were far superior to the traditional media. The Version7.0 of Media Player has a user-friendly interface and sports a flashy Sonique-style look. Other aesthetic features include the dancing and downloadable "visualisations" that appear during audio playback. It also now has graphic equaliser, which has now become a part of standard feature for any multimedia application. The feature, which is unique to the Windows Media player is its Media library that actually organises all audio as well as video files and can also be used as the play-list in a sequential order specified. Moreover Windows Media Player also includes an optional plug-in that lets you turn your audio files to record able CDs. Radio tuner is another outstanding feature of the Windows Media player, using which you can tune a number of Internet radio broadcast and can enjoy audio and video broadcast. This is one of the few music players, which supports a majority of multimedia formats like MP3, AVI, QuickTime movies, RealAudio, and RealVideo. However, only Windows ’98 and Windows 2000 users can use this software, as it does not support Windows 95 and NT.

With the growing popularity of the Internet, the world has become a small place. No matter wherever you are, you can stay in touch with office or the personal computer through the Internet. Though there are various utilities to connect two computers through dial-up networking, yet for connecting two or more computers through the Internet, there are only a few programs available. Remote explorer is software, using which you can connect to other computers via the Net. The most distinguishing feature of this software is that you do not require a fixed IP address to connect to the other computer. However it requires dynamic IP address. Using this program on a machine, you can configure it as a client or a host. Thus if you chose to be a client then you can access the resources of other computer, but if you configure your computer as a host, then the other user logging in your PC can access the resources of your computer. The user can easily browse the files and also initiate a file transfer from one PC to another by simply dragging and dropping from the source to destination. The file transfer through this software is fast as it speeds up the download by compressing the file up to 80 per cent. Other outstanding feature of this software includes the ability to view the host’s desktop as well as copy and rename folders and files. You can also conduct real time online chat with the other user, while being connected to the other computer. Another use is the security feature that allows the host computer user to set the security restriction in terms of access level and also file transfer regulation. Download a shareware copy of this software from http://www.remoteexplorer.com.

Microsoft Power Point is presentation software, which is equally user-friendly. It gives enough flexibility and options to make the presentation a class apart. However, the person, whom you intend to send your presentation or even show might not be having Power Point. Thus, for all such purposes, Microsoft has made "Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer" available, which is free and can be used to view files with extensions like .ppt, .pps and .pot formatted files. This program is capable of opening any file created with PowerPoint versions 3.0, 95, 97 or 2000. Further, the program works with the output from both Windows and Macintosh editions of the software; thus making life easier for the users. Like other Microsoft applications, this is also easy to use software and can handle any type of presentations like slide show, animation, effects and action settings, irrespective of their size. Using this software, you can use a virtual pen to write on the presentation. Since this is a freeware you can even bundle this software along with your presentation. This software can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/

One common mistake, which almost everyone does while working in a word processor is spelling mistakes. In order to get rid of these mistakes you can download and install all-purpose spell checker from http://www.palware.com. This is a handy utility, which has some value added features, which are normally not available in the programs default spell checker. This utility is designed to check text from a majority of Windows-based programs and not just the favourite word processor. Thus, you can remain sure that your spelling mistakes will be taken care of, no matter what software you use. This software resides in your system trey and swings into action, when it is clicked on. All you have to do is copy the text that you wish to spell check into this software and check it for any possible spelling mistakes. Like other spell checks, it also gives several options of the mis-spelt word. The good feature is that it is accurate and offers solutions like some extra editing that might be required. So, once you have done with, you can copy this text to its original source. This software may find application in normal secretarial jobs and professional writing.