Monday, May 5, 2003		Downloads

Those of us who have dial up access to the Internet try to control the time spent by different family members on the Net to keep telephone bills under check. Often, some family members manage to get more time than others. Here is a freeware that lets you allot units of time or NetUnits as the program prefers to call these every week. So you can be judicious and allot as many units of usage to each family member as you deem fit. The other featured freeware is a lock-up tool that provides password protection to your computer. Unless the correct password is given, it shuts down the computer automatically.

NetUnits 1

This is a small online time management tool that is both useful and extremely simple to set up. This is probably this tool’s strongest point: you can have the system up and running within 30 seconds, literally! By design, NetUnits does only one thing and does it well: it helps control computer and the Internet use. Do not expect NetUnits (or any other software) to fully replace parental attention. What this program does is simple but effective. Every seven days, each user of the computer is automatically granted a certain amount of NetUnits (which basically correspond to minutes of computer use). When a user runs out of NetUnits, the computer basically becomes unusable for that user until the next automatic recharge date. NetUnits counters can be checked at any time using the NetUnits desktop icon or by pressing the F6 key. The automatic weekly reset feature will also help children get used to the fundamental idea of managing limited resources, just like with pocket money. As the NetUnits administrator (i.e. the user who downloaded and installed NetUnits - typically one of the parents), you can also decide to manually reset the counters at any time, using the NetUnits control tool in your Start menu. To make the best use of NetUnits, it is recommended to set up Windows as a multi-user environment. This can be done through the Windows "Users" control panel, through the Start menu. By default, user quotas are set to 300 NetUnits per week. To change these, use the NetUnits Control tool in your Start menu. It supports Microsoft Windows ‘98, ME, 2000 and XP. The uninstaller is included. Download available at http://dre.chaosnet.org/nuset-171.exe

Guardx 2.0

Guardx is a computer lock-up tool that prompts for a password as soon as it is launched. If the password is not entered within 20 seconds, it will shutdown the computer. The program is most useful when launched from the command line or scheduled with Windows Task Scheduler (e.g to schedule shutdowns that can be bypassed with a password). It installs to load at Windows startup, but only offers limited protection, since it can be easily bypassed by using Ctrl+ Alt+ Del before the screen loads. Once the login screen is loaded though, any attempt to terminate the program without the proper password will result in a PC shutdown. Though it gives limited control as a serious access control yet it is good if used in combination with schedulers or via command line. Download available from www.spymode.com/spyware/guardx.exe