Free - Joey D's Mind Share

Free PDF creation software shootout! FreePDF Creator vs. CutePDF Writer

Normally, I do not “do” product reviews for software companies if they ask me to. But I am a people pleaser and I do like to try out new things. Every once in a while I am informed about a software title that impresses

Free

Free TFTP Server from SolarWinds

I am borrowing a 2600 Cisco router from a good friend of mine so I can start setting up my Cisco test lab at home. After firing up the 2600 for the first time, executing SHOW VERSION showed that it that had v12.0

Administrative Tools

A Must Have Tool, Notepad++

Notepad in Windows is a necessary tool. It is a quick text editor that opens fast, and does Instead, I use . It is a free Notepad replacement that can handle hundreds of different types of files and is an excellent HTTP, XML, CSS, and

Blog

Blog writing on a Mac OS X computer

One of my favorite apps on Windows is Windows Live Writer. It is a 'what-you-see-is-what-you-get' (a.k.a. WYSIWYG) blog editor for Windows and integrates well with Wordpress, Blogger, and other blogging services. However, Live Writer is not available for Mac OS X and

Bitlocker

What is Full Hard Disk Encryption and why should I care about it?

In today’s article, I am not going to talk about passwords or backing up your data. Instead, we are going to take a deep dive on one key security issue; and that issue is encryption. Do you know what encryption is? Better yet,

Beta

The Windows 8 Family of Software: Betas and Consumer Previews

We all know that the Windows 8 Consumer Preview was released on Feb. 29th 2012. Windows 8 Consumer Preview Download Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Beta Download Windows Server “8” Beta Download I wasn’t impressed with the Windows 8 Developer Preview, but Microsoft has

Administrative Tools

Scan a computer for malware, offline

I’m too lazy tonight to write a full article on the new Windows Defender Offline Scan “Sometimes, malicious and other potentially unwanted software, including rootkits, try to install themselves on your PC. This can happen when you connect to the Internet or install

Community

A New Creation from Joe – The IT Dashboard!

In most every IT job that I have ever had, there has always been some type of website or ‘dashboard’ specifically for the team that I was currently working with. That home page would have embedded web links to the common or uncommon websites

Administrative Tools

Help fix family and friends’ computer issues using TeamViewer

One of the things that I truly enjoy is donating my time to family and friends to help them fix a problem with their computer (only as long as they don’t abuse this free service ). The problem is that I live in Florida

Free

Google+ for Google Apps customers is finally available

Not familiar with Google+? Basically, Google+ is Facebook on steroids and is highly integrated with other Google services (Picasa Web, Calendar, etc). Google+ has been available for personal Google accounts for a few months, which means that if you have a Gmail account you

Administrative Tools

Get Your Windows Computer Running Faster Again

I got to thinking about a question the other day simply because of the fact that someone that I was helping over the phone with their computer issues asked me a similar question. It went a little something like this, “So this computer is

Advise

A great Office Suite to enjoy for free, LibreOffice

One of the most important pieces of software on a computer is some type of office suite. Some of the most popular office suites are Microsoft Office, Apple iWork, Corel Office, and maybe even IBM Lotus. The downside to all of these office suites

Administrative Tools

Free PC Tool, Smart Defrag 2 for Windows

As you may or may not know, the standard\basic Windows defragmentation tool is not that amazing and it only does one job – defragment the hard drive(s). I have been trying out a different defrag tool and I am liking it quite a

Administrative Tools

USB Boot Disk Edition #4 – Using the Windows USB DVD Download Tool

The from Microsoft is an incredibly useful piece of But this is not the only magic of this tool. Using the , any WinPE based image can be made into a bootable USB stick! This includes: Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 Windows Server

Advise

Where can I find training information on how to work with Microsoft Office applications?

If you are used to using Office 2003, and you upgrade to Office 2007 or Office 2010, you will notice a big visual change. If you need help figuring out how to use this new interface called the “Ribbon”, look no further than the

Administrative Tools

Convert MP4 video to DVD with Windows Live Essentials

What is MP4 video? Right now it is a popular mobile video format that is compatible with iPod, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Zune, and Windows Phone devices. It is a format designed to have a low bitrate but maintain high quality video on mobile devices.

Certification

ITIL v3 Training Materials

I have been going back ‘to my roots’, essentially trying to remember my core training while I worked in an ITIL based IT shop. I remember trying to find free materials or videos about 2 years ago on the subject but there were almost

Administrative Tools

5 Best Free Remote Desktop and Screen Sharing Applications

Normally, I would be the one to write the article on this topic. But AddictiveTips.com beat me to the punch! on some of the best, free, remote desktop sharing programs. For a quick list, here is what is in the article: TeamViewer YuuGuu

Advise

Create your own Media Center PC for free with XBMC

I have been a user of the XBOX Media Center since 2005 and it is a fantastic dashboard replacement and fully featured media center for the original XBOX. But since the original XBOX is no longer supported, the team decided to port the software

Free

Set up your own hobby IP-PBX phone system at home with Asterisk

I stumbled upon while looking for information on the awesome open- source phone system software. I don’t have a great deal of time to go over this right now, but here is a bit of info on straight from : “ is software that turns

Administrative Tools

Enhance the Windows command line user experience with PowerCMD

Windows administrators are pretty familiar with the Windows command line, or CMD. But even with Windows 7, CMD has not changed much since the release of Windows NT 4. You cannot cut and paste easily to or from the command line, you can’t

Free

Windows 7 and Windows Vista features on Windows XP

After getting used to working with Windows 7 exclusively at home and at my old job, I have found it somewhat difficult to go back to using Windows XP Professional at my new job. Some of the new Windows 7 features are undeniably awesome

Administrative Tools

Screenpresso – The Free Alternative for SnagIT and the Snipping Tool

There are a ton of reasons as to why one would need to take a screenshot of their computer screen. Maybe it could be for computer support reasons, or email a screenshot to a family member, or maybe you saw something cool on a

Advise

Write your novel with Storybook

Writing story, novel, or non-fiction material is no easy task. For most, it takes months or years just to get thoughts and ideas written down on paper. Sometimes there is research involved and trying to incorporate that into the book is its own task.

Free

Create PDFs for Free

PDF is the most popular paperless document format on the net. Businesses, schools, and governments love the PDF format because it allows them to create a document that can be protected from editing and email it or post it to a web site for