Monday, January 1, 2001		Downloads of the week

Microsoft Office is a wonderful Windows-based application, but still leaves a lot of scope for value additions. The customisation of various utilities suiting the special need and requirements of the individual users can add a lot of value in day-to-day office applications. These office productivity software, which offers a lot of value enhancement are the creations of canon software and can be downloaded from http://www.software.canon.com. These utilities are specially designed for the home and small office users and aims at adding more value to the common office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Using these software one can produce reports, stationary, marketing material and resumes easily and conveniently. It has a rich template that includes text and readymade objects, which really makes working in Microsoft Office simple. Though you will not find much difference between the templates of Office Ready and the templates already available in Office at a glance but more use of these templates will make the difference known. Some interesting templates are Slide Master for easily adding graphics, formatting and other elements into PowerPoint. Another template produces quick expense reports in Excel, without requiring the user to create them by hand. Thirdly, the PhotoSocket feature lets you edit and insert images quickly from digital devices and removable media. To add further productivity, it also has photo- editing options to the MS Office applications, which eliminates the need of any extra graphics related software for creating more productivity in regular office documents, including presentations using Microsoft PowerPoint. This software actually makes its place in the normal MS Office components like Word, Excel and PowerPoint and gets loaded automatically when these programs are being loaded. Thus you are not required to load these programs separately.

This is specialised software, primarily aimed at small business. It can prove to be the lifeline of small business and helps in controlling inventory and point-of-sale. Atrex includes a wide range of inventory functions, invoicing, order entry and POs. Thus it helps in proper management of a small business organisation. It is thus a step towards full computerisation of a small business, and works in Windows environment. Using this software you can work out quickest and most efficient ways to increase the profits of business as computerisation allows you to quickly determine how much stock you have on hand, see when you are running low on certain items without having to do a physical check of inventory. You can also create and generate a mailing list of customers to promote repeat business, and keep a history of sales. This software can prove to be a boon for computer dealers, retailers, stores, government agencies and auto component dealers. This is a small form of an enterprise resource-planning programme, which is comprehensive, intuitive, and also easy to use. This software can be downloaded from http://www.1000years.com

In this era of cyber world, everybody wants to have his/her presence felt on the Web. What could be a better way of making the presence felt on the Web than having virtual office on the Net? You can have office on the Internet by using the Netopia Virtual Office software. You can invite people to office in the cyber world and can also do business. You can also use the visitor services to interact with virtual office colleagues around the world. Some of the main features of the Netopia Virtual Office include access to other virtual offices, a collaborative office on the Internet, an easy-to-remember Internet name and a flexible security framework. You can download the trial version of this software from http://beta.netopia.com/voffice.

The computer revolution also brought about a revolution in the world of printing. With the latest and efficient printers being available at economical prices, printing has now become a household affair. However, besides using printer for printing letters and documents, you can also use it for many purposes like mailing labels, flyers, business cards, cassette tape labels, video tape labels, name badges, buttons, envelopes, letterheads and any other thing, which comes to your mind. However, for making the task of printing easier, you will need the software Via Print, which you can download from http://www.viablesoftware.com. This is excellent software for everyone, who wishes to print their stuff directly from their desktop. It is basically a multipurpose utility, which has templates to most of the common printing applications; thus it does not require any special skills and qualifications to use this software for the purpose of professional printing. This is a feature-packed software and allows you to import favourite pictures from any program to this software and combine it with the publication you wish to print. Using this software you can add up to 10 Windows bitmap or Windows metafile pictures to your label, business card, or flyer. Moreover you can also rotate text to any angle for attention grabbing headlines or tiny copyright notices. Some other features of this software like drag and drop text box, line box, and picture box placement offers flexibility of professional publishing software and also make the task of printing easier. It also supports full colour compatibility and thus you can use coloured fonts and boxes for special effects.

Often you come across a situation, while working on your computer, when you wish to make a duplicate copy of disks. Though you can make a copy by using the Dos Command also, but it is tedious and in some cases may not copy hidden files and counters. However, you can replicate your disk exactly by using DiskCopy. DiskCopy is a 32 bit program for formatting and creating duplicate disks. It is a easy to use software and has a simple and user-friendly interface. Using this software, you can also make multiple copies of disk as this program will prompt you for the number of copies you have in mind, thus making it possible multiple replication of disk. Technically speaking, Disk Copy does not perform an actual track by track copy, it simply copies the directory structure and files, but 99 per cent of the time, that is exactly what is really required. This can be downloaded from http://members.aol.com/ron2222/disk.htm

Happy 99.exe is a common virus, which though is not deadly yet fills up the hard disk and after some days, shows the hard disk as full. On an average you can find this virus in 5 out of 10 PCs, who are not even aware of the presence of this virus. This program hunts down the Happy99 virus and safely removes it from the system and also if possible, shows a list of e-mail addresses that you inadvertently may have sent the virus into. You can also hunt down some other nasty virus like the infamous love bug, matrix and remove them from system. You can find a detailed list of viruses, which can be treated by this freeware software that can be downloaded from http://www.getvirushelp.com.