Author: Cyril Roger

The MLB season got to a start yesterday and saw the New York Mets beat the St Louis Cardinals in a rematch of last year’s National League Championship Series. The race to the World Series will last until September and feature great players like Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson. Past years have shown that teams that reach the World Series a year rarely repeat this feat the next year. Add to that the traditional deals and swaps of the preseason and it’s pretty difficult to predict which teams will make it to the playoffs. You might be eager to follow your favourite team as it races for the pennant and a place in the playoffs over the next 6 months so how about checking out some baseball games and applications?

Any serious baseball fan knows the game is all about stats. RBIs, BAs, strikes or shut outs are just a few of the figures that determine whether your favourite players are doing well or have a lousy year. Whether you play baseball or softball, Baseball Memories can track your own stats over a whole season. Check out how you fare compared to professionals and analyze your stats to see what you need to improve over the season.

Continue reading “You’re at bat on Softonic”

On to the third of our five part series on free antivirus applications, today we cover Clamwin the only open source program in our selection. You would be mistaken to dismiss Clamwin just because of its unattractive interface. Using up only 26 MB of memory, Clamwin can smoothly scan without interrupting the flow of your other applications. That’s a good thing, because a full scan took us nearly two hours and a half. Surprisingly, with only 45,475 files scanned, half as much as Avast!, Clamwin still managed to find 6 different pieces of malware that neither Avast! nor AVG picked up.

The default configuration of the antivirus means it will only report viruses; you’ll then have to choose between removing or quarantining them. The progress window will inform you of malware it picks up, but there’s no way of knowing how far in the scan you’ve progressed. However it’s good to know that Clamwin automatically unloads infected programs from your PC memory, lightening up your CPU usage. During the process, the program will give priority to executables and it will also check mail in your Outlook for any viruses. Taking a look at the different features in the program, we liked the scan scheduler and filters you can set to exclude files from your scan. Overall, we were very satisfied with the way Clamwin performed and, although it looks quite unattractive, we believe it’s a very good solution to protect your PC.

Clamwin test results:

• Uses 26 MB of memory
• Full scan time: 2:21:00
• Scanned objects: 45,475
• Scan scheduler
• Set filters to exclude files from scanning
• Ugly interface
• No information on scan progress
• Default only reports virus; you can then remove or quarantine it
• Automatically unloads infected programs for Computer Memory
• Automatically scans EXEs and emails

Free antivirus apps part 1: AVG

Free antivirus apps part 2: Avast! Home

Today we bring you the first in a five part series, where we will test out five different free antivirus applications. All too often users get bullied into buying an expensive antivirus that either works bad or ends up being completely useless, overlooking free alternatives. Most of these free antivirus applications have greatly improved over time and often offer as much as their trial counterparts. Names like AVG or Avast! are already lauded in the community as secure free solutions for users. We decided to give a test run to 5 free antivirus applications, AVG, Avast! Home, Clamwin, Active Virus Shield, and Antivir, testing the CPU usage, length of virus scan, files scanned and special features included in each program. At the end of our series we’ll tell you which one we preferred but meanwhile feel free to leave a comment and tell us what you love or hate about each of the free antivirus applications.

We start off the series with AVG Anti-Virus System Free Edition. This solid antivirus application has been around for years and was recently reviewed here on insideTonic. AVG fared moderately well in our tests. It used up around 30 MB of system RAM, which is normal for such a program. A full scan took us exactly 1:04:51, which we found a bit on the lengthy side, but AVG did scan a total of 113,393 files including network places and shared documents. We didn’t launch the email scanner because it integrates with Outlook and automatically monitors emails as you receive them. Contrary to other antivirus applications AVG will automatically heal infected files instead of giving you a choice of quarantine or deletion. The program features a scheduler which is automatically set at 8 AM every morning.

AVG test results:

• Uses up 30 MB of memory
• Full scan time: 1:04:51
• Scanned objects: 113,393
• Email scanner integrated in Outlook
• Scheduler automatically set at 08 AM
• Automatically heals infected files

With broadband connections or WiFi set up almost anywhere you go, and portable devices like USB keys offering bigger storage space than ever before, you’d think file compression technology would become obsolete. Surprisingly though, archiving applications are still very popular with users, thanks to extra features like encryption or file repair.

A few years back, having Winzip on your PC was a prerequisite, but with time many more versatile competitors and better compression formats have popped up. Nowadays the name of the game is not really the size of compressions but securing your files and quickly transmitting them to other users. We’ve chosen 6 different compression utilities to put to the test.

Continue reading “Six compression utilities compared”

The most painful moment of my daily PC experience, apart from a 10 minute startup waiting time, is probably the whole uninstalling process. Whereas in Mac all you need to do is find the application you want to get rid of and drag it in the trash can, uninstalling a program on a PC can drag on for ages. Sure, there’s the “Add or remove programs” feature in your control panel, but more often than not you’ll realize you’re  stuck with remnants of a program you thought had been wiped from your PC. Hence the contradictory solution, of installing a specialized uninstaller to do the work for you.

Total Uninstall and Smarty Uninstaller are two very good tools. They generate a detailed list of all the applications and updates installed on your PC. If you can’t find a program in the Windows Control Panel, there’s a good chance you’ll find it here. Another application we recommend is Norton Removal Tool. If you have Norton Ghost or any version of Norton Antivirus on your PC and want to get rid of it completely, the Norton Removal Tool will automatically browse your PC and remove all relevant files. Built specifically by Symantec, this program will clean your PC of all Norton files still lying in your PC. To avoid unnecessary clutter on your PC, the best advice is still to only install essential programs, remove applications you barely use, and clean your PC of obsolete files regularly.