Written by Keir Thomas, and claimed to be the world’s most widely read Ubuntu book, Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference has a lot to offer for beginners and advanced users alike. The book,
- focuses on core competencies and background knowledge needed to be an expert Ubuntu user;
- is accessible and easy to understand, even for first time Linux users;
- covers the latest Ubuntu versions – 8.04 and 8.10.
The book is available for just $9.94 at Amazon, but you can grab a free PDF version from the home page. If you’ve been wanting to try out Linux (err, Ubuntu Linux), this guide should definitely be the place to start.
Windows Vista included a new feature called Sidebar, where you can add from a given list of gadgets. Sidebar was an innovative feature, but it took too much of the desktop space and abusively ate memory, and has subsequently been discarded in Windows 7. 7 sports freely floating desktop gadgets, which run pretty independent on one another. However, you can actually detach the gadgets from the Vista Sidebar as well and place them anywhere on the desktop! Right click any gadget, select “Detach from Sidebar”, and drag it over to anywhere on the desktop. The gadgets will continue to depend on the Sidebar, but at least they WILL float freely around your desktop. 
USB drives (pen drives / thumb drives / USB sticks) are indispensible for carrying a few gigs of data around with ease. Low cost, reliability, superfast transfer speeds, and the drag-and-drop abilities have made them immensely popular today. But all this convenience comes with a price as well – it’s damn easy for viruses and worms to infect a USB drive and, worse still, it is equally easy for your PC to get that infection from the drive. I’ve stayed in a hostel long enough to know that infections carried in a thumb drive are usually too smart to infiltrate a PC even in the presence of a good antivirus. So, what’s the way out? Just a few easy steps, and you can save yourself a lot of trouble.
Most antiviruses have real time protection, that keep checking for malware and suspicious activities in the background. However, this doesn’t stop most malware from sneaking into your computer’s startup list, or the registry files. WinPatrol comes to the recue by monitoring every single nook and corner of your PC for suspicious activities. With WinPatrol, you’ll be immediately warned if there’s a change in your startup list, or your browser is hijacked, or some unknown script tries to execute itself. With WinPatrol, you can rest assured that your PC isn’t going to be tinkered with some crazy little malware.
Sun Microsystems have released version of 2.1.2 of their open source virtualization tool – VirtualBox. Even if it’s a “maintenance” release, the version fixes a plethora of bugs, and adds support for Windows 7, which is currently under beta. Among other changes, the launch speed has notched up quite a bit, and 3D acceleration is handled better through OpenGL. 
Lavasoft have released the anniversary edition of their massively popular anti-spyware, Ad-Aware. I’ve never been a big fan of Lavasoft (ever since they copied Avira AntiVir and marketed it as Helix) and their terribly limited free version of Ad-Aware, but that puts me in the tiny minority list. Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition / 2009 / 8.0 (all refer to the same version) brings significant changes to the user interface and provides better-than-ever protection from all sorts of malware. If you’re still using previous versions, better upgrade to get maximum protection from the bad, bad thingies lurking out there. :)
Photos can define hostel life more than anything else. While taking snapshots with your mobile phone might be easy, keeping them organized is the tough task. Not so with Google Picasa though, which does most of the hard work of organising your images. Just download the pics to your computer from your mobile phone / camera, and Picasa will automatically pick and store them at the required destination. Picasa has all the basic image editing options as well, should you require them. And if you’ve a Google account, you can even upload the photos to Picasa Web Albums, so that they’re safe from hardware or other failures on your PC.
Home sickness taking over? Fire into Skype, ask your parents to do the same, and start a video call! Skype is easily the best and most popular software for PC-to-PC calls. The excellent video quality and sound clarity can almost make you feel like you’re talking to your family members over the dining table!
Hostel isn’t just about merry making, you still have to read to get through your courses! Scribd.com is a great online resource for reading, downloading, and sharing documents and eBooks on almost any topic. So next time your professor’s words fly over your head, go to Scribd.com, get a good document on the topic and start scribing!
It has been always there, ready to help you out when nothing else clicked. And Wikipedia still stands tall, showcasing the largest ever collection of educational, political, social, religious and God-knows-what articles of the world. Should Scribd and other resources fail, you can always turn to Wikipedia for an article on the topic. Many claim Wikipedia to be carrying false information (as the articles can be modified by anyone), while in reality articles with false information are very rare. 
Note taking is vital for us students, and this task doesn’t get any easier than with Evernote. This software application allows users to capture information of various types, including text notes, mobile phone snapshots, printed and handwritten text within images, web clips, and digital ink. All data added to Evernote are run through a series of recognizers that make any text within the various note formats searchable. The application uses a continuous "roll of paper" metaphor for its user interface. Additionally, users may create folders, categories and notebooks. Evernote is available as a download for PCs, Macs, smart phones, and also as a web application.
If you’re pathetic gamer like me, Cheatbook.de is the place to go. The website provides cheat codes for almost every imaginable computer game in the world! The website also provides a download for it’s database, which you can conveniently use from your desktop. With Cheatbook, you can always remain a step ahead of others in the gaming world. :)
There is always a possibility of getting some torrid virus through your hostel’s LAN. Thus, a regularly updating antivirus with good heuristics (ability to detect viruses through their behaviour) is what you need to keep your computer safe. And nothing gets better at heuristic detection than Avira’s AntiVir. The free personal edition is extremely light, updates frequently, and detects almost every single malware thrown at your PC! AntiVir is fast moving ahead of other rival tools like AVG and Avast!, and is a must-have for proper PC protection.
Most of us teenagers are music fanatics, and thus a 5 – 10 GB data of music on your PC is perfectly normal. Windows Media Player will almost certainly choke for such large amounts, so turn your attention to Songbird. Tipped to be an iTunes killer, this open source music management tool does it’s job very smoothly. Songbird also comes with Firefox-like extension capabilities, meaning you can add available plug-ins and skins (feathers) for added functionalities and looks.
We all crave for a blazing fast, smooth-running PC that neither croaks nor gives you that horrible blue screen of death. And one significant way of making that rugged PC faster is through optimal software usage. Using multi-utility tools, removing bloated apps, switching over to cloud services – all these can easily help you erode a massive amount of usage of your resources while still allowing you to be productive and fast. In this post, we shall compile THE leanest software pack for your PC. Mind that this lean pack covers only the bare essentials – you’ll have to use your special software tools in any case!
Say no to massive “Internet / Total Security Suites”; they contain just too many useless additional components that’ll bog down your system. A lightweight but effective antivirus, a good firewall and some basic safe surfing knowledge is all you need. For the leanest pack, I’ll recommend:
Using Real Player, Quicktime Player, Winamp etc. together is an outright crime – they can put enough crap to gag your computer to death. 
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Many online accounts are offering gigs of free storage, which you can utilise to store all your important documents, family photos, music and more. They remain safe from your hardware failures and crashes, and will be accessible on-the-go. 
If you’re REALLY running out of space, start using portable apps. They’re just like normal programs, but don’t require any installation – meaning they can run from any storage device like a pen drive. Portable versions for many popular tools (OpenOffice.org, VLC, Firefox, Thunderbird, Clamwin antivirus, Foobar2000…) have been made, all you need is to put them in your thumb drive and plug it into your PC to start using those tools. A good place to start your portable collection is 