Loans are a big part of the lives of most people now, simply because a well thought out and well executed loan can bring you something big in your life well before you would have been able to get it otherwise. Mortgages, home equity loans, lines of credit and a number of other loans are taken out every day by people from different walks of life all hoping to be able to use the loan in order to help better their lives. Calculators are helpful when it comes to using loans and therefore it is important for people interested in loans to have software to help them along.

That is where the Loan*Calculator! Plus 2.6 comes in.  It is a piece of software containing seven different types of loan calculators. It includes a calculator for simple interest (only applied once a year) and compounded interest (calculated and applied multiple times each year). It also has calculators to help you calculate the factors of your loan as well as a calculator to help you figure out what your exact remaining balance is. In addition to that, it has a feature that can calculate your amortization schedule as well as an advisor function that can help you with potential refinances. In addition to that, it also has accelerated payment and balloon payment calculators.

It’s completely free to download and more information is available at http://www.pine-grove.com/Loan%20Calculator%20Plus/

With the advent of wireless internet, what people are seeing more and more often is that the areas around them are full of wireless connections. With people sending data back and forth as well as using wireless for convenience purposes, there is a good chance that some place near you has wireless connections that can be used. Ultimately, it is a great thing to have simply because of the convenience factor, but if you are interested in using some of the wireless signals around you then you really need to know where they happen to be first.

For example, if you want to know exactly where the wireless networks in your area are, then you can use the NetStumbler 0.4.0 to find out. It is a program that has the ability to search your area and find out the location of any 802.11b and 802.11a wireless local area networks.  In addition to that, it includes GPS functionality so that you can use the two together as a powerful tool for quite literally “stumbling onto the internet.” The name is quite apt in that sense and many people have tried and approved this completely free piece of software.

More information can be found at http://www.stumbler.net/

When you take a look at all of the different software pieces out there, what you often see is that there are a number that seem to created for some weird purpose that you wouldn’t really use on any regular basis. The Free Uninstaller is the exact opposite of that; it is a software program that is created with a very common use in mind.  When you consider the add/remove program that comes with the Windows software, you can come to the conclusion that there are a lot of faults in it. It doesn’t work all the time and the permissions issues can sometimes really derail any plans you might have had for that annoying piece of software that you just can’t seem to uninstall.

There is actually a dual purpose to this program. First, it replaces the add/remove program that comes with Windows with a far more effective uninstaller; one that can remove any application that was installed with the Windows operating system. In addition to that, it also has the ability to remove entries from the uninstall list; fixing the other big problem with Windows add/remove software. Have you ever noticed a piece of software on the list that you just removed and tried to remove it again only to be told it wasn’t a real file? That’s a very frustrating situation and the Free Uninstaller 1.1 can be used to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

More info can be found at http://www.freeuninstalleren.glt.pl/

One of the coolest things ever developed for the use of online music files is the concept of Ogg Vorbis tags.  These are tags attached to audio files that allow you to give information to other people that might be using the same file later on to listen.  For example, if you’ve ever seen a file pop up in your Windows Media Player with information regarding the name of the artist, the title of the song, the year of publishing, the CD cover or anything else, what you were looking at was very likely a Vorbis tag!

Well, now you can create and maintain your Vorbis tags through the use of the WinVorbis 1.60 editor.  It is a multi-file editor that really makes the process of encoding and entering tags for a whole CD’s worth of songs as easy as possible.   Not only does it allow you easy editing of the typical artist and title tags, but it also allows you define up to a maximum of six other tags specifically for use with your CD files.   It is about as user friendly as can be and the reason that so many people like it is specifically because it tags music tagging and makes it extremely easy.

Oh and by the way it’s free as well; more information on it can be found at http://winvorbis.stationplaylist.com/

When you think about it, part of making software for the computer should be in making tasks that people almost don’t even think about when they do them easier.   In other words, if you can take an everyday task that a person has to do and find a way for them to make that task easier, then you have really accomplished a great feat in your software design career.

Take the example of file browsing.  If you’re like most computer savvy users, what you are going to find is that you have a number of different CDs with a lot of data on each CD. Every CD that you’ve made that contains files from Microsoft office, programs, software and games are all going to be CDs that you might need to browse at some point to find a specific file. If you’ve got hundreds of CDs to look at, this can become a real problem in terms of loading and unloading a CD each time you want to look at its contents.

If you have the Offline CD Browser however, what you can do is make copies of your CDs and save images of their file contents within the program itself. Then, when you need to find a file, you can look through all of your CDs in moments because of the file structures having been saved on the hard drive. You can’t activate any of the files, but searching through them is a breeze.

More information can be found at http://www.anderssoftware.com/ocdb/

If you’ve been using any version of Windows, then you will probably be familiar with the mechanism that Microsoft uses to distinguish true icon pieces from icon pieces that have been placed where they are as shortcuts to other icon pieces located elsewhere throughout the user’s hard drive. The mechanism for signifying the difference between a true icon and a shortcut is a small arrow that is put on overlay to the icon itself. This arrow is easily distinguishable and is used by Windows users to figure out which of their icons are shortcuts and which are not.

Of course, some users might want to remove this arrow for aesthetic purposes, simply because some people don’t like the look of it. While that’s been fine up until now, one of the vexing things about Windows Vista (one among many) is that there is no mechanism in place to actually remove that arrow. And because of the design scheme of Windows Vista, the arrow can actually be more annoying than in previous versions; especially to people that want it gone.

Well, if you want your arrows gone with minimal fuss, then take a look at the Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover 1.3. It is a program that allows you to either leave the shortcut arrows as they are, dull their effect and lighten their colour, or alternatively remove them altogether. It is a nifty little program to add to your hard drive and of course it is completely free to use.

More information available at http://www.frameworkx.com/frameworkx/content.aspx?ch=60&id=531

kruptos 2 is a powerful freeware application that enables you to encrypt your sensitive data. It uses 128 bit blowfish encryption to encrypt your files or folders which then can only be accessed with the correct password, so that only you can have access to them. You can even select to disguise the newly encrypted files name for further privacy.

One thing it could be used for is USB flash drives and portable storage devices, ensuring that no one can access your private or sensitive data if the drive is lost or stolen. It can also create self decrypting files and includes a file shredding utility.

Check it out at the website here.

One of the things that you need to think about when it comes to maintaining your computer is the software that you are going to use to actually maintain your files. It is important because while a lot of people simply use the Windows Explorer software to do so, Windows Explorer can actually be resource intensive as well as break down at the same time that windows itself does. There are a lot of bugs in Windows Explorer that can make life difficult from time to time and that is why the need for third party software is needed; software like the free to use A43.

A43 is the freeware file manager that many people use instead of Windows Explorer, including all of the people that are lined up to say wonderful things about it. The one real bug it had, which was the cursor problem from version 2.51, has been completely fixed in version 2.52 and now there are really no downsides to using this program. The upsides are of course lack of resources needed to use it as well as no installer necessary.  It is simply a great piece of software and one that you should check out!

More information about it can be found here: http://www.primitus.us/a43/

There are so many different problems that occur when you change computers that for the most part people really hate having to do so. There are large things like the transfer of large files and programs as well as the establishing of a similar operating system set of parameters to the one that was on the previous computer and then there are the smaller things like bookmarks. Bookmarks might seem like a very small thing to some people, but when you consider that a lot of people put their web development hopes and dreams in bookmarks, what you are going to find is that the bookmarks must be transferred if the person’s normal online existence can continue.

If you happen to be using Opera, then the oSync 1.0.1 can definitely help you through it.  It allows you to automate the sync processes between two different systems and furthermore even sit and watch while the software does all of the work for you. The latest version of the software allows for threaded syncing, which happens to increase sync speed dramatically.  In addition to that, a lot of merging work has been done so that a lot of previous errors from merging operations are now non-existent.

Give it a try if you’re on Opera as it is free to use; more information can be found at http://osync.sourceforge.net/

One of the most important things in the lives of a lot of people when it comes to activities on their computer is file sharing.   And for people that are not really that computer savvy, the one thing you need to be thinking about is that they are probably into photo sharing. Where other areas of internet activity have really only been popularized by people that are computer savvy, the idea of being able to use digital cameras to take pictures and then upload those pictures into album software packages is something that has really been adopted by almost every household around.

That is why software pieces like MyPhotoIndex are extremely useful in today’s society. It is a free photo organizer that allows you to assign categories to all your photos and sort them in a number of different ways. You can even print them, save them in multiple file formats and attach them to outgoing outlook express packages with extreme ease. While the program is still in its early stages, it is expanding in leaps and bounds and should be very good to use very soon. Oh yeah, and it’s absolutely free!
 
More info available at http://www.myphotoindex.com/