To provide my computer with even more protection against security threats such as viruses, spywares, and rootkits, I recently installed WinPatrol an intrusion prevention system. Unlike traditional security programs which scans your hard drive to search for threats that has already been installed on your system, WinPatrol takes a snapshot of your critical system resources and alerts you to any changes that may occur without your knowledge.
When it comes to watching videos, there is not one format that dominates as a standard. We have Windows Media Video (.wmv), RealVideo (.rm or .rmvb), QuickTime Movie (.mov), DivX or Xvid (.avi), MPEG-4 (.mp4), Ogg (.ogg), Matroska (.mkv), and the list goes on. In the past I would have to install at least three media players so that I can watch all these different formats. Luckily, there are media players that are free and able to play all these formats.
The three that I know of are:
To watch RealVideo with these players you need to install the Real Alternative codec pack.
Out of the three players my preference is the KMPlayer because it produces the best sound quality. As well, it’s also able to play through incomplete or corrupted videos without stopping or crashing the player. I once tried playing a video which was only 80% complete from bittorrent, other than some cut scenes, I was able to watch the entire video without any hassles. The other two either stopped playing or crashed.
So far I haven’t managed to find a Remote Desktop client for Windows which can be installed on a portable drive. This might be a bit of inconvenience if you are trying to remote desktop from a public terminal that is locked down. After doing a bit of searching, I have a easy way to have Remote Desktop working on your portable drive.
For Windows XP:
C:\Windows\System32mstsc.exe, and mstscax.dllThat’s it! To run the Remote Desktop client just execute mstsc.exe on your portable drive. If you have a U3 portable drive you can add a shortcut to your launchpad menu refer to the blog U3 and PortableApp.
This solution is not perfect as it leaves behind a file and some registry information in the client’s computer.
The file could be found at
%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\Default.rdp
The registry entries can be found in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\
I always believe its a good idea to protect my important files even if my computer is password protected. Two key things to help protect my extra sensitive data is to encrypt it, and shred it when deleting.
These two software also comes with portable versions so that it can be installed in a USB flash key or portable hard drive.
Another software that I use is TrueCrypt. This software is able create a virtual encrypted disk within a file on a hard drive and then mounts it as a real disk. What I find particular useful that “Traveller Mode” functionality. It allows TrueCrypt to be installed on any portable hard drive or storage devices.
To setup the traveller mode, I had to first create a new volume on my portable drive by following the tutorial.
After creating the volume, I followed these instructions to complete the traveller mode setup.
I watch a lot of media, this includes movies, tv series, and anime. As well, being in the IT industry, technology is changing all the time and I find myself reading through many articles and books. With so much material, it has become hard to track them inside an Excel spreadsheet. Searching through the web, I managed to find two free products which works well for me.