Monday, April 30, 2001		Downloads of the week

This shareware will accelerate your computer. It will even accelerate a Pentium 4. Hare uses the CPU Tasking technology to achieve most of its work: it will allocate over 90 per cent of the CPU to the front most application, but its intelligent multi-tasking motor will give just the right CPU to some of the background apps. Hare will also simulate a 3D acceleration card to avoid jerkiness in 3D games and accelerate them. The powerful but small caching of Hare will accelerate an application not only when you will open it but also when you will use it. Since Hare’s code takes over Windows code, acceleration is provided for anything, and not only for copies or applications launching (what other acceleration programmes propose). Don’t think that your brand new Pentium 4 cannot be accelerated! The secret of Hare is that it does not try to accelerate the system. It replaces the system. Even a Pentium with 60 MHz processor is fast but it must be managed properly. If you feel that your computer is faster and more reactive but that you can’t give a precise number (11 per cent faster, 30 per cent faster), you may use the Benchmark wizard for both — to verify Hare’s efficiency and impress your friends. Since Hare is a shareware, its free download runs 15 times on your computer. You can download it from www.dachshundsoftware.com. Works on 486 and Pentium computers. Supported systems: Windows 95/98/Me and Windows NT4/Windows 2000.

This is the freeware version of NeoTrace, and excellent trace route tool. Though it lacks many of the main version’s features, Express offers the same visual trace route mapping that made NeoTrace famous. By entering a domain name or IP address, the program displays how data transfers from your computer to a given server and back. You will even be able to identify the location of each node. The information is presented from an attractive and scalable world map. NeoTrace offers a number of obvious uses, from tracking down bottlenecks to locating the whereabouts of spammers. It also provides a fascinating overview of the Internet. In addition to displaying trace route data on maps, the program also provides the information in the standard text-based format. The List view provides the IP addresses, computer/network names and response times for each hop. NeoTrace Express extracts network and registrant information from respective databases on the Internet. As a bonus, NeoTrace Express is directly accessible as a toolbar from Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher. For example, as you browse through tribuneindia.com you can click the button to view the locations of one of our servers. It will enable you to find out why your sites are opening so fast or so slow. NeoTrace Express is freeware, though the developer asks that you register as an user. It is a small download — 817k. To run your minimum requirements are 8 MB RAM. 1MB HD Space. VGA Video. 80486SX CPU and Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows ’98, Windows 2000 or Windows Me. You may download it from www.rocketdownload.com

Some Internet cookie-management programs nab cookies (small text files that store information about you and your Web browsing patterns) as soon as a Web site tries to place them on your hard drive. The cost of that total-control approach, however, is a seemingly endless stream of pop-up alert windows. If you prefer to sort through cookies without having your Web wanderings constantly interrupted, post-browsing cookie-management utilities are just what you need. Some cookies expire after a single browsing session. Others are set to persist on your hard drive — often for years or even decades. Many of these persistent cookies are a cause of concern for Web surfers worried about privacy. Each time you return to the Web site that served the cookie, it uses the file to add information to your user profile. But clean-up programs thwart such companies’ efforts to track you on the Net. One of these is Cookies Manager. Unlike the Netscape 6 browser, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 5.5 doesn’t allow you to easily view information about stored cookies and delete them. But Pierre-Marie Devigne’s Cookies Manager 1.1 freeware delivers some of this functionality to Internet Explorer in a compact 19 KB download. Cookies manager lists cookies alphabetically in three side-by-side columns: New cookies appear in the centre window, those you’ve chosen to accept appear on the left, and rejected cookies appear on the right. Clicking on arrow buttons slides a cookie from one list to another. Distinguishing the good cookies from the bad can be tricky, however. The only information Cookies Manager provides is the URL of the server that placed the cookie on your hard drive. Double-clicking the cookie entry opens it in your default text editor, but its gobbled contents are nearly non- decipherable. You may download it from http://home.nordnet.fr/~pmdevigne

The Microsoft Windows Alternative Mouse Pointers are easy-to-see mouse pointer schemes designed to work with Windows 95/98/Me and Windows NT 4.0.

These pointer schemes are especially helpful for laptop computer users and users with low vision though anybody can use these for a change. The following alternative mouse pointer schemes are included in the downloadable file: Windows Black, Windows Black (large), Windows Black (extra large),

Windows Inverted, Windows Inverted (large), Windows Inverted (extra large),

Windows Standard (large) and Windows Standard (extra large). To install the

Alternative Mouse Pointer Schemes download the Altpnt.exe file from the

Microsoft Software Library to an empty folder. In My Computer, Windows

Explorer, or Windows NT Explorer, double- click the Altpnt.exe file you downloaded and follow the instructions on the screen. To use the Microsoft

Windows Alternative Mouse Pointers click the Start button, point to

Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click the Mouse icon. On the

Pointers tab, click the scheme you want to use, and then click OK. To remove

the Alternative Mouse Pointer Schemes, in Control Panel, double-click

Add/Remove Programs. Download from

www.microsoft.com/downloads/release,asp?releaseid=13318

— Raman Mohan