The world of computer programming was completely changed with the arrival of the personal computer in the later 70's. Those with a flair for writing programs could purchase a programming language for reasonable cost, create their own work and sell it to the fast growing numbers of PC owners.
To sell their wares, a community evolved wherein programmers made their work available for no cost to the purchaser on a trial basis and, if happy with the function of the program, the consumer could purchase the product at a cost far less than similar programs produced by the then emerging large corporations. This type of try-before-buy has become known as shareware.
To see the range of programs available, check out a site such as Download.com which has been providing a distribution service for shareware for many years.
Not only has the shareware market grown over the years, there are also those programmers who write programs for no financial return and their products fall into the category known as freeware. There are many freeware programs, such as IrfanView (a the graphics utility often mentioned in this column), that are seen as essential for today's computing and have millions of users world-wide.
Before heading off to Download.com or Tucows to download a program you need, there are a couple of things to bear in mind. Firstly check Windows - you might be surprised to find that you already have a program that's already installed that'll do the job. For example, WordPad is a reasonable wordprocessor and XP has in-built graphics handling, such as a slide viewer, resizer and print wizard, a digital movie editor to get you started, and a media player with a whole range of features including burning CDs.
Once you find a shareware program that appears it will do the job you want, check other users' comments and read any reviews. For each program listed at Download.com, for example, there's a link to the author's site, and comments from those who've tried it. When reading these comments and reviews, check how well the program installs, if it makes any changes to Windows that might be harmful to other programs, if it has a proper Windows un-installer in the Add/Remove section of the Control Panel, and any restrictions placed by the author on the trial version.
webDotWiz has several freeware programs that he depends on and has often mentioned them in this column. They include IrfanView, the AVG anti-virus program (an alternative is AntiVir Personal Edition), 602PC Suite for wordprocessing and some spreadsheeting, and NoteTab Light, a text editor, which is used to produce all content for his web sites. If Windows hasn't already got a program you need, check what's available from freeware and shareware programmers.
Some Hotmail users, especially those who've signed up recently, may have already received notification of the increase to 250Mb inbox space and anti-virus scanning and cleaning. So keep an eye out for a post informing you when your account has been updated. How soon the updates come through for you depends on where your Hotmail server is around the world but all features should be implemented by September.
If you paid for the Hotmail extra storage feature, you'll be getting 2Gb of inbox storage as well as anti-virus scanning and cleaning and the capability of attachments up to 20Mb. Also, graphics advertisments will be removed from your Hotmail pages.
XP users should be keeping an eye out for Service Pack 2. Don't even think about downloading it unless you're fortunate and on broadband. It's about 280Mb in size and should be available on CD, either on the front cover CDs from well-known computer magazines or by mail. As well check out the web sites of programs you regard as critical to your work and see if the company concerned has any updates you need to apply. Service Pack 2 makes some big changes and additions to XP to enforce stronger security and some of your applications could be affected.
