3rd Party Apps

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Removing McAfee Agent from your machine
Recently had a job where I had to remove McAfee from 40 machines in order to replace them with F-Secure PSB. Removing the McAfee AV was not a problem ...
Amazon Phishing Scam Alert
A new phishing scam is being reported in the media and this time it's emails that are made to look like they come from Amazon. According to Moneywi...
Installing Microsoft Office 365 Desktop Apps Configurator
I recently came across a problem when trying to install the Office 365 desktop apps configurator. The machine in question was a Windows Vista Home Pre...
axon IT takes Federation of Irish Societies into the Cloud
axon IT has provided a cloud computing solution to the Federation of Irish Societies (FIS) – the national representative body for the Irish in B...
Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 Standard
Network administrators might consider migrating from a Small Business Server 2003 environment for number reasons. These include, reaching the SBS 2003...

Creating PDFs in Microsoft Word

Posted by Richard on Monday, October 20th, 2008

Adobe PDF documents are one of the easiest and secure ways of sending business documents over the Internet, however you cannot create them easily by default using Microsoft Word.

Why use PDFs?

PDF documents can be secured using encryption or passwords, they are also lightweight (as they are compressed) and they can be quickly and easily created. By far the greatest advantage of printing a Word document to PDF is that if you track changes to documents they cannot be viewed by the recipient (this has been known to cause embarrassment in large organisations).

How do I Print to PDF?

To print to PDF using Microsoft Word you need to install a PDF Printer, my favourite is CutePDF Writer. Simply download and install the CutePDF software and then open Microsoft Word and print the document selecting CutePDF from the printer dropdown menu.

Tags: adobe pdf, cutepdf, microsoft word
Posted in 3rd Party Apps, Microsoft, Software | 1 Comment »

All about zip files

Posted by Mohammed on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

What is a zip file?

A zip file is essentially a folder containing many files which have been compressed. Zip files are easier to email as you only have to attach one file, they can also be password protected/encrypted and take up less disk space.

What do I use to open a zip file?

To open a zip file there are several options. If you use Windows XP or Vista you do not need to use a separate program as there is a compression utility built in. If you would like a more advanced way of creating zip files you can use one of the following free utilities: WinZip or WinRAR.

How do I open a zip file?

In order to decompress a zip file and view its contents you should right-click on it and select “extract to…” the application you are using should then run and the files should be decompressed and ready to be viewed.

How do I create a zip file?

To create a zip file simply put all of the files you want to compress into a folder, then right-click on the folder and select “add to archive”.

Tags: zip files
Posted in 3rd Party Apps, Software | No Comments »

New Vista Codec Package Available

Posted by Andy on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

What is a Codec? A codec compresses or decompresses digital media formats, some examples of codec are MP3 (audio) and MPEG (video). Codecs are used by your operating system (for example Microsoft Windows Vista) to translate these differing digital media formats.

The problem with having so many different formats is that the operating system requires more software to be able to decode the video/audio. Thankfully Shark007.net with the help of the MSFN community has released a codec package which bundles the most common codec’s into one simple installation for Windows Vista.

You can download the Windows Vista Codec Package here

Tags: codec package, media codec, windows vista
Posted in 3rd Party Apps, Microsoft, Software, Vista | No Comments »

Backup Windows for Free

Posted by Andy on Saturday, September 27th, 2008

It is important to back up the data you store on your computer/network regularly. If your computer or a computer on your network was to get a virus you could potentially lose important work/information. There is also the possibility that your hardware may fail.

The best way to back up your system is to use software such as Cobain Backup, which allows you to backup all of your computers data including multimedia files, documents and user profiles. It is recommended you back up your data to an external storage medium such as an external hard drive or a web server. Cobain Backup is free and can also be used to automate the backup process meaning that you do not have to worry about your data being recoverable should the unfortunate happen.

Posted in 3rd Party Apps, Software, Vista | No Comments »

Windows Vista Free Partition Manager

Posted by Mike on Friday, September 26th, 2008

EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition, the first completely free partition manager that runs on Windows Vista has been released. Partition Manager is software that allows you to manage hard disk partitions. The software allows you to create, resize, move, edit, hide/unhide and format partitions.

What is a hard disk partition?

A hard disk partition is a portion of a hard drive. When you create a partition it acts as if it is a separate hard disk drive in the operating system.

For example when you install Windows a partition is created, usually named “c:”

Why use a partition?

Partitions are commonly used to organise data. For example you could create a partition on your hard disk drive to store multimedia (such as music, photos and videos), another to store documents and another to hold your operating system. The advantage of this is that you know exactly where each type of data is stored. Additionally you can easily backup one partition without having to sort through all files to find what you want.

Where can I get EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition?

To download EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition please visit their website. Please note that this software is only free for users of Windows Vista 32-Bit.

Posted in 3rd Party Apps, Hardware | No Comments »