ClamWin Free Antivirus

I’ve been happily using the free version of AVG Antivirus for a number of years. However, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the amount of memory it uses and about how slow it makes my PC run when performing on-access scanning. Recently my current installation started bombarding me with pop-up windows informing me that it was time to upgrade so I visited the AVG web site to check out what the latest version had to offer. In addition to the standard antivirus protection I noticed that anti-spyware and something called Safe Search have been added. Mmm, I thought, that will push up the amount of memory and processing required to an even more unacceptable level. Time to find an alternative antivirus application.

Enter ClamWin!

Clamwin is a free and open source antivirus appliction for Windows based on ClamAV, which is an antivirus program for UNIX.

The first thing you need to know about ClamWin is that it does not feature on-access scanning of files, i.e. real-time protection – at least not yet. Some may see this as a problem but if you’re careful it need not be.

In my experience as an IT professional most virus infections result from opening files that, on reflection, you’d never have touched with a barge pole normally. So if you take the time to pause for a moment before opening that email attachment or file you downloaded from the interweb you will dramatically reduce the likelihood of your PC becoming infected. If you couple this care and attention with frequently scheduled ClamWin scans of those parts of a Windows installation most likely to be infected by a virus (the Windows directory itself and the Documents & Settings folders) you reduce the chance of infection to more or less zero. Of course you also have to be sure to scan all other areas of your system regularly too, as well as making sure that you keep your antivirus definition database up to date (ClamWin very thoughtfully does this for you). All too often I’ve found myself removing viruses from PCs where the virus definitions were 6 months or more out-of-date!

Anyway, to the ClamWin program itself…

Once installed ClamWin runs as system tray entry which has a very small memory footprint. This tray entry allows you to configure ClamWin and to open the main ClamWin interface, manually download updates, view scan and update reports, schedule virus scans, check for version updates and visit the ClamWin web site. In addition to this the program adds a Scan with ClamWin Free Antivirus extension to the right-click menu within Windows Explorer. This is very useful as it allows you to invoke a manual scan of any suspicious files before you open them. Whilst this is perhaps not as elegant as a real-time scan it certainly uses less memory and makes your PC run more efficiently.

I recommend that you set up a schedule of virus scans that will process the Windows directory and the Documents & Settings folders once a day, and a full system scan at least once a week. Though I should stress that that is what works for me – you may need to schedule more scans depending on how you use your system.

You can also instruct ClamWin to scan email attachements (both incoming and outgoing). It can be configured to exclude file types that you specify from scans and you can also limit the size of files that will be scanned (e.g. by telling the program not to scan files that are larger than, say, 100Mb). There is also an option to adjust the priority assigned to virus scans and to send an email alert if a virus is detected. All of which makes ClamWin a pretty powerful package despite the lack of a price tag.

As a result of moving to ClamWin, I have noticed an improvement in the performance of my PC – applications load and run faster now that they are not being scanned each time they are accessed – and I’m also experiencing quicker boot times. And even when ClamWin is conducting a scan in the background there is no noticeable impact on the performance of my PC.

The ClamWin site indicates that they are working on an on-access component which will be available in a later version but I now wonder whether I’ll find that feature necessary at all. That said, there are many others who would prefer that an on-access scanner be included, or at least that they have the option to turn one on/off as requirements dictate. That’s why the current incarnation of ClamWin falls slightly short of a perfect score. However, it remains an antivirus program with a very bright future.

Final Score: 4 out of 5

Trader’s Little Helper

Trader’s Little Helper (TLH) is an invaluable tool if, like me, you are into collecting live recordings.

It is a graphical front-end for several command-line utilities (including flac, lame, and shorten) which makes it easy to encode and decode a variety of audio file formats to wav files, create and verify MD5 checksums, build torrent files, and fix sector boundary errors. It runs on all flavours of Windows from 98 to Vista and, best of all, is free for non-commercial use.

So far I have only used TLH to encode/decode wav files to flac and shorten formats, to check for errors in encoded files and to test wav files to see if they were created from mp3 source files. Using TLH to do these few things has been very easy thanks to its drag-and-drop interface and the straight-forward, sensible layout of its program window. You use the menu to choose the action you want to perform, drag your files into the space provided (or browse for them), adjust any options and then hit the action button (which will read Encode, Decode, Convert, etc., depeneding on the action selected). Then you just sit back and wait for TLH to do it’s stuff. The time taken will vary depending on the action performed but so far I have found it to be very quick most of the time.

This very short post, and my use of TLH, just scratches the surface of what it can do but even for these few tasks it has saved me a huge amount of time. I’m confident that when I need to make use of its other features I’ll be able to do so with ease.

I’ll maybe revisit this post or add another more detailed post in the future but for now this is an audio utility that you  really should have if you work with lossless audio files.

Final Score: 5 out of 5

FeedBurner

Another useful tool for bloggers is FeedBurner. This is a service which enables you deliver your web content in a number of different ways, the most obvious example of which being the delivery of your blog as an RSS Feed.

As with other services (such as Technorati, etc) signing up is easy and follows a 2 step process:

1. provide the URL of the blog you want to burn as an RSS feed;
2. enter a title and an address for your feed, choose a user name and password, and supply your email address.

That’s it! With these simple steps completed, you can move on to using FeedBurner to “Analyze, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize and Troubleshootize” your feed.

The About FeedBurner page contains a link to a short video clip which clearly explains how to sign up and then configure your feed.

Once you have you’re feed(s) set up, you can publicise your feeds in a variety of ways, an example of which can be seen in the sidebar of this blog under the heading Other Views. This widget shows a headline summary of recent posts I have made over on A View From The West. You can also keep track of statistics associated with your feed(s) such as how many subscribers you have.

There are various other things that FeedBurner can do for you but the best way to assess these is really to browse their site yourself and have a look at what’s on offer. I have found their service very easy to use and very reliable on which note I shall say: give them a whirl.

Final Score: 4 out of 5

USB Drive Letter Manager

Have you ever been annoyed by the fact that couldn’t be sure which drive letter would be assigned to your USB flash drive when you plugged it into your PC?

Well, as a PortableApps user (more on which later), I have. So much so, in fact, that I recently spent quite a bit of time looking for a solution. I tinkered with the autorun file on the USB drive and tried a couple of autoexec tricks but all to no avail. Then I happened to find my way to the USBDLM page.

This is a nifty little utility which can be installed as a Windows service and can then ensure that one, or more, dedicated drive letters are used when you plug in a USB drive.

This utility comes in the form of a zip archive (a windows installer MSI is available for network installation) and is free for private and educational use.

Installation is pretty straight-forward:

• unzip the file to your hard drive;
• copy the enclosed USBDLM_sample.ini configuration file to USBDLM.ini;
• open this file and change it to at least specify the drive letter(s) you want to use for your USB flash drive(s) – keep the chosen drive letter(s) high in the alphabet to prevent conflict with other devices, especially if you’re on a network;
• there are more options which are well documented but which I saw no reason to employ;
• then save the edited configuration file and run the included _install.cmd script.

Thereafter, when you plug in your USB flash drive it will be assigned the drive letter you have specified.

Sigh. Now I can assign any drive letter I want to my USB flash drive it’s safe to use that drive letter when setting up a backup, configuring a virus scan, or whatever. An excellent little utility!

Final Score: An easy 5 out of 5!

media-convert.com

Media Convert is a site which offers an incredibly useful and free service. It will convert files between a wide range of formats for you without the need to install a pile of different file conversion applications.

I was using it today to convert some .bmp files to the .png format and the process was an absolute snap:

1. Use their web site to browse to the location on your PC where the file you want to convert can be found.
2. The file type should be automatically recognised by their system, though you can choose the type of the source file if you want.
3. Then choose the format you want for your output file from one of the file types available in the Output Format drop-down list.
4. If you’re converting image files, you also have an option to resize the output image and, if supported by the file type, apply compression to it.
5. Accept their terms and conditions and click OK.
6. Within a few minutes, depending on the size of the file being converted, you should be presented with a successful result and a page which allows you to download the converted file either directly or in a .zip file.

An absolute dawdle and an extremely useful service and I particularly like the fact that you don’t have to install any software locally to use this site. Excellent.

For a full list of file types that can be converted visit http://media-convert.com.

Final Score: 5 out of 5!

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