Freeware Archiving Programs

There is quite an assortment of archiving utilities to help you archive a number of pictures, documents, etc. into a single file, suitable for emailing or storing long term on a backup drive.

This relates somewhat to an article about replacing paid applications with freeware alternatives I wrote a long time back:

On a related and timely note, I have been tasked with uninstalling un-licensed WinZIP from our corporate workstations and replacing it with IZArc.

Like my company, many organizations have installed WinZIP on their corporate images because up until version 10, WinZIP never stopped working after the initial 45-day trial period was up. Granted, an annoying nag-screen would appear, but otherwise, you could easily use WinZIP FAR beyond the eval period with full functionality, even though you were blatantly opposing the license agreement. Many still to this day are using it, believing it is freeware (it never was).

Here’s a quick summary of some of the most popular archiving tools out there (note that this does not include utilities that are programs that include archiving as a secondary function like Total Commander).

I myself prefer IZArc…what’s your favorite?

IZArc

Version: 3.81 (4.0 now in beta)

Opens: (47 file types) 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO

Archives to: (11 file types) .7z, .bh, .bza, .tar.bz2, .cab, .jar, .lha, .tar, .tar.gz, .zip, .yz1

Supports encryption? Yes (AES 128, 192, 256, ZIP 2.0)

Command-Line version: Yes

Portable? Yes

Other notes: Skinnable interface, free for corporate use.

JZip

Opens: (15 file types) .zip, .tgz, .rar, .tar, .7z, .bz2, .iso, .cab, .arj, .tpz, .gz, .z, .gzip, .taz, .tbz

Archives to: (5 file types) .zip, .7z, .gZip, .bZip2, .tar

Portable? No

Other Notes: free for corporate use (without add-ons), MSI version coming soon.

PeaZIP

Opens: (32 file types – 85+ if using plugins) ACE, ARJ, CAB, CHM, COMPOUND (MSI, DOC, XLS, PPT), CPIO, ISO, Java (JAR, EAR, WAR), Linux (DEB, PET/PUP, RPM, SLP), LHA/LZH, LZMA, Mac (DMG/HFS), NSIS, Open Office files, PAK/PK3/PK4, RAR, SMZIP, U3P, UDF, WIM, XAR, XPI, Z/TZ

Archives to: (10 file types) 7Z, ARC, BZ2, GZ, PAQ/LPAQ, PEA, QUAD/BALZ, TAR, UPX, ZIP

Portable? No

Other Notes: Free for corporate use, interface uses drop downs a bit more than the other offerings. Not as ‘WinZIP’-like in this regard.

7Zip

Opens: (18 file formats) ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z

Archives to: (5 file types) 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR

Supports encryption? Yes (AES 256)

Command-Line version: Yes

Portable? Yes

The Home Computer Freeware List: Updated 05/08/09

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Rob's great freeware list (aka "toolbox" for building a Windows-based (I know, I know :) ) computer for as little money as possible.

Note that this is a list that I recommend for every baseline installation...I will recommend various specialty applications over the course of my musings, but this is something that I believe everyone should install.

Enjoy - every product here is one that I use or have used. :)

System cleanup utility (good for routine system maintenance) - CCleaner, nCleaner Second - both are quality, but I would say CCleaner is a more intuitive to use. You can do a lot of damage with nCleaner Second if you are not careful!

Defragmenting your hard disk - JKDefrag (for more of you techie folks), Defraggler - Windows defragment is OK, but JKDefrag is quicker, and does a lot more optimization (move large files to the end of the volume, for example). Defraggler is a bit more user-friendly when it comes to appearance. Both are quality products.

Create PDFs - PDFCreator - Creates a new printer in your control panel, and allows you to convert anything that you print to a PDF.

Read PDFs - Foxit PDF reader - Nice non-resource intensive PDF reading software.

Antivirus - Avast 4.8 Home, AVG 8.0, - You should NEVER surf without some form of AV installed. Avast! is nice because it can scan your system for viruses while the screen saver is active, and protects your PC against multiple vectors. Honorable mentions: Avira AntiVir. Want free AV for a Windows server? Use ClamWin (no real-time scanner, so you will have to run scheduled scans, but it works VERY well).

Spyware Protection - Ad-Aware 2008 (not a real-time scanner), ThreatFire, SuperAntiSpyware - Spyware sucks, and these tools do a great job of cleaning them up. I would recommend installing a combination of these utilities, using one to clean-up after the other.

removed from the list: SpywareTerminator

IE Spy/Malware Protection - IE-SpyAds - This will keep 99% of activex components from being installed on your system through IE. If you are going to use IE, you should use it with *ahem* protection.

Firewall - Comodo - Very configurable - looks sharp, excellent reviews (replacing Kerio).

Remote Control (Technical Support) - CrossLoop - This one is great for consultants and other at-home tech folks - totally secure and SO easy to use. Crossloop makes remote controlling mom's computer a dream. CrossLoop now supports Mac!

Remote Control (Extending your office) - Logmein - Access your computer from a secure (256-bit encrypted) connection. You don't need someone on the other end to approve your connection (like Crossloop).

Screenshot Utility - FastStone Capture 5.3. If you can find it, use it. Newer versions are not free. Can't find it? Use Easy Capture. Are you an advanced user? Screen Captor is superior to both utilities.

VPN - Hamachi - Connect two disparate networks together with little trouble. Great for hooking up with your buddies for online gaming, or home "family" support over the Internet.

File Recovery - PC Inspector File Restore, Recuva - Did you accidentally delete your files from your digital camera? Use this to restore it. Good for system drives as well.

Internet Browsing - FireFox - Tabbed browsing, all sorts of great add-ons available, spyware/popup blocker, best of all NO activex support.

Email Client - Thunderbird - Built in spam protection, RSS reader and more.

FTP Client - FileZilla, WinSCP - Secure FTP, save your sessions, easy drag & drop interface.

Office Productivity - Microsoft Live Office (online), Google Docs (online), Open Office (local install). The non-MS apps are MS Office compatible. Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation software -These will do for 90% of your low to middle of the road users.

Zip Archiving - IZArc - New to the list is 'IZArc', recommended by fellow freeware addict, Carputers. I have to agree. If you use WinZip, then you can use IZArc. Excellent interface, supports the widest amount of archive formats, great features, just great all around!

Keep track of startup programs - Sysinternals AutoRuns - Excellent tool to discover what the heck is running at startup - definitely for advanced users. Can produce a CSV file for viewing later (or to post to online support forums), etc. VERY thorough. You can use this to help you clean up malware that is slowing down your system. Also recommended is Hijack This, which features a huge user-community.

Graphics Editing - The Gimp - EXCELLENT freebie editor with a lot of built-in effects and layering capability. If you like the Photoshop interface, you can try GimpShop. Want something simpler? Use Paint.net.

Image Touch Ups, Photo Processing - Picasa - Easy to use program that can help you catalog, view, burn, and touch-up photographs. Also, you can use Picasa to upload photos to your blog, and submit them to online digital image printing services. A digital camera's best friend.

Image Thumbnail Viewer - The classic, Irfanview, my personal favorite - FastStone Viewer and another popular one, XNView.

CD Burning - CD Burner XP Pro - Supports burning from/to ISO image files, audio CD's, DVDs, etc. - Especially nice if you have a burner, but no longer have the OEM burning software that came with it. Other quality apps are Infra Recorder and Express Burner Free.

Backup software - Syncback - Backup to/from an FTP location, compress and encrypt data, supports directory synchronization, and much, much more.

DVD viewing (video) - VLC Media Player - Play your DVD/VCD/MPEG videos from a single player. Works GREAT! You can use VLC to watch DVDs without re-installing the OEM DVD software. You can also use it to convert videos (transcode).

Video conversion - Any Video Converter Free. Convert a video file to a myriad of different formats, great for copying videos to your IPod, Zune, or other personal media player.

removed from the list: Media Converter SA, Super

Video codecs - K-Lite codec pack - this will enable your computer to play just about any video type out there.

RSS News Reader - Google Reader (online), FeedDemon NewsGator (which now will synchronize with Google Reader!) -Keep up with your online news and blogs (*ahem*, like this one?).

Multi-IM/chat client - Pidgin, and if you don't use IRC, then Digsby is for you!

More as I find 'em.

LDAP capable IM solution: OpenFire 3.4.6

OpenFire 3.4.6

http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp

My need for IM:

Recently, I have discovered the need to notify my users of system outages (um…email?). The Windows Messenger service is out of the question as it is hard to selectively broadcast messages, and you cannot keep a central log of your messages easily – or at least, not without some third-party solution keeping track for you. Not only that, but you can’t configure file transfer, perform voice chat or other more advanced functions.

Enter OpenFire, a Jabber/XMPP compatible IM server, and Spark, the chat client provided by Jive software (makers of OpenFire). I was completely flabbergasted by the capabilities that this free software could provide!

So, a quick list of features out of the box (and mind you, this is supposed to be a quick overview, so I may skip over some other features you might find handy):

• SQL, MySQL, PostGreSQL, Oracle, IBM DB2, HSQLDB and embedded database compatible
• LDAP compatible authentication
• Assortments of plugins available
• Supports other Jabber clients (besides ‘Spark’, the one that you can download from OpenFire’s website)
• Extensive administration options
• Broadcast capability
• User groups
• Import/Export user data
• Configurable chat rooms

A quick look at the server information page

What caught my attention was the ability to authenticate my users via LDAP. This means that my users can log in with their Windows domain credentials and not be concerned with creating and/or remembering a new or different password. Nice!

Setup complexity: Low

If you are a sysadmin who is worth his or her salt, you should have absolutely no trouble setting this up within 5 minutes. If you aren’t terribly familiar with LDAP (and want to get this to work) or have some port magic you have to work, it could take you a little while longer to set up…but, out of the box, it only takes a few minutes to get going.

To set up OpenFire in my environment, I opted for the SQL server backend, for scalability and performance. I only needed to know the SQL administrative password for setup, then OpenFire did the rest.

Also, when I configured LDAP, I needed to know the DN for my administrative account (which would be authenticating my logons) and CN for where to pull my user accounts from. I used SysInternals’ AD Explorer to get this information quickly.

These users were imported into OpenFire from AD automatically.

The Spark client

• For me, the awesomeness does not stop at the OpenFire server (and how ridiculously easy it is to set up), but I really like the Spark client as well.
• The download is a bit hefty at 27Mb, but I assure you, it is a full-featured and robust client that has some great capabilities:
• Easy file-transfer
• Send screenshots quickly with the built-in screenshot snip tool
• Voice chat
• Avatar support
• Invite-to conference

Now, some of these features can be disabled at the server level (like the file-transfer and avatar support), but for a support staff, you can see the benefits of having a screenshot snip tool!

What would be really nice is the ability to lock down the main Spark interface so that you could remove the ‘Accounts’ and ‘Advanced’ buttons…don’t want my users messing around, right?

Plugins

Some of the plugins available for the OpenFire server:

Asterisk-IM Openfire Plugin

Integration for Asterisk and Openfire.

Broadcast

Broadcasts messages to users.

Client Control

Controls clients allowed to connect and available features

Content Filter

Scans message packets for defined patterns

Email Listener

Listens for emails and sends alerts to specific users.

Fastpath Service

Support for managed queued chat requests, such as a support team might use.

Fastpath Webchat

Web based chat client for Fastpath.

IM Gateway

Provides gateway connectivity to the other public instant messaging networks

Monitoring Service

Monitors conversations and statistics of the server.

MotD (Message of the Day)

Allows admins to have a message sent to users each time they log in.

Packet Filter

Rules to enforce ethical communication

Presence Service

Exposes presence information through HTTP.

Registration

Performs various actions whenever a new user account is created.

Search

Provides support for Jabber Search (XEP-0055)

SIP Phone Plugin

Provides support for SIP account management

Subscription

Automatically accepts or rejects subsription requests

User Import Export

Enables import and export of user data

User Service

Allows administration of users via HTTP requests.

Oh, OpenFire, how do I love thee?

What next for me?

Next, I need to:

• Develop an acceptable use policy
• Figure out how to lock Spark/OpenFire down a bit more to prevent abuse
• Discover proper deployment technique and pre-configure the client upon installation
• Test out the ‘Support chat room’ plugin (IT support, anyone?)

Have you used OpenFire? Do you use a different IM solution at your job? What were your issues that you had to overcome in order to successfully deploy it in your organization?

If you aren’t an IT admin like myself – what do you think of the IM in your company? Is it useful? What don’t you like?

Get the skinny on various freeware reviews [web]: Appnews.net

Coming at you from blogger Rarst (from Rarst.net) is a consolidated freeware review listing bringing you links from a few of the biggest freeware blogs out there like Freeware Genius, Rarst.net and Ghacks.net...

Great link summaries if you wanted to look at a single feed for all the good stuff!

Please check it out and support Rarst's efforts.

http://appnews.net/

System management akin to DameWare and Hyena: Purgos 3.0.249

Purgos 3.0.249
http://www.softulz.net/

Have you ever used DameWare tools or SystemTools' Hyena products? They are GREAT paid system administration tools, essential for any network administrator to effectively support multiple users spanning different physical locations.

Purgos is a new tool to me (although it is at version 3!) which almost fills the freeware niche of "DameWare"-esque utilities in that you can quickly inventory a remote system, allows remote control via VNC or RDP, shows you quick device details, quick remote registry support and more.

Note that it is not nearly as clean as DameWare or Hyena, but it does approach those programs' level of usefulness when you need to get a quick connection to a remote computer.

With Purgos, you can quickly:

• Determine OS, Service pack version
• Remote control via RDP or VNC
• Browse locally installed hard disks on remote computer
• Filter computers/servers based upon various criteria
• Group computers/servers
• Run executables from remote station
  

Central inventory database

The main difference between Purgos and the aforementioned DameWare and Hyena products is that managed computers report into a central administration server via an installed agent, similar to SMS. That means you can view system details even when the computer is offline. Limited information is available on Purgos' website to determine exactly how the agent works...i.e. does it update statistics on a predetermined interval, or when the agent starts up?

The nice thing about a centralized database is that you can run a quick query showing how many managed computers you have where service pack 3 is installed, or how many computers have 512Mb of RAM.

Add computers to the Purgos console

You can add new computers to the console quickly via a couple different routes:

• Single computer name/IP
• Multiple computers via Active Directory import
• Multiple computers via NTLM domain
• Multiple computers via text file listing

A little refinement could be made...

It seems like the computer management console piece is a bit more refined than the 'server files' component. When I attempted to look at some of the properties of where the server files and folders where located, I get an error, but this is if no files have been dropped into the folder...

Also, it was not immediately clear what these folders are for, but more in-depth documentation hunting would probably help me out there.

There are a lot of cool features built into Purgos that I don't have time to review at this time (baby and all, right?), here's a couple interesting features:

Computer Management (Copy Files)	Section 2.4
An arbitrary set of files can be copied to one or more computers. The files that need to be copied to the server can be added to the servers file set at the time of copy or before. Select the files or set of files from all files on the server to copy.

Computer Management (Snapshots)

Section 2.9

Snapshots are a way of capturing the configuration of a given system at a given time. Once two or more snapshots have been taken you can then compare them to analyze the differences. Snapshots can be scheduled to run on a scheduled basis or can be taken immediately the compare with an older snapshot. Comparing snapshots consists of selecting the two points in time that you wish to compare and beginning the compare process . Once the compare process is complete you can view the specific details about the differences found.

I'd like to see the ability to run our own commands against a remote computer, much like Hyena's functionality. Also, I'd like to see remote printers that are installed...

If you get a chance to take a look at this, post your thoughts here.

Announcement: New freeware junkie added to my family!

You've no doubt noticed my lack of posts lately (or the lessened frequency of them).

Well, it was for a great reason - we had been expecting a new child for the last couple of weeks and finally, after all the long waiting, young Patterson arrived on Monday April 13th at 12:48pm! He was 9 lbs 0 ounces and has a full head of hair (lucky!).

Hopefully as we get acclimated to the new baby in the house I will be able to post with more frequency once again.

I want to thank everyone for their well-wishes in advance, and promise you I will be back in full force soon!

Update: Spiceworks 4.0 coming in June

Spiceworks, a personal favorite freebie of mine is slated for a 4.0 release in June.



Some of the new non-heartburn inducing spiciness (as mentioned in the 4.0 forums):

• Network maps
• Bulk-editing of objects
• Removal of Glide support (not many people use it)
• IE6 support dropped for reports and admin interface (end user GUI will still be supported)
• Latest Ruby on Rails as a framework, resulting in faster operation
  
• New end-user portal layout
  

In the meantime, if you don't know what Spiceworks is or want to know more about what it does, review this slideshow/video:

Spiceworks Intro

View more presentations from ground047.