DACS Review of Last Month's Meeting

Review of Shareware Night

At our September DACS General Meeting the topic was our members’ favorite Shareware. The evening included excellent presentations by members Bruce Preston, Jamie Yates, Marc Cohen, and Jim Scheef on this popular type of software that you can download free and try out before purchasing.

During the featured part of our General Meeting we heard presentations on the products listed below. Some are offered without charge (freeware) and some require a small purchase price after the tryout period. Each section includes the web address of the product, so you can find out further information.

TextPad. - A powerful replacement for Notepad, a tool for editing web pages, or a programming IDE. www.textpad.com

Cool Ruler - A tool which allows you to measure objects on your screen in pixels, cm, inches, etc. www.fabsoft.com

MouseZoom - A small program that provides a 50x magnification of parts of your screen with a color dropper to find the exact color of a pixel. www.neuber.com

Clic*Pic - An application which will resize and compress your images, make thumbnails, a project folder, and create a professional looking gallery. www.isdntek.com

Roboform - The top-rated password manager and web form filler that completely automates password entering and form filling. This product encrypts your passwords for security, and can run entirely from a USB key. It allows you access to all your passwords through one master password. www.roboform.com

Sun Clock -.A computer screen version of the very expensive wall sized sun clock. It graphically shows, on a world map, the position of the sun and moon and the rise and set lines as they change with the seasons. The program also shows moon phases, a clock face, and the local star field indicating the position of the sun, moon and stars. www.mapmaker.com

xReminder Pro - An elegant looking, multi-featured, tray-based reminder application which allows you to organize important dates and times. Keeping track of your important dates and events has never been easier with this program. www.xreminder.com/index.html

Based on comments made by the audience after the meeting, a number of the Shareware products were of interest to the attendees, and they were going to return home and review them more thoroughly to decide which ones they would like to try.

It certainly appears that this was a very worthwhile meeting.

If you use a Shareware product that you find useful and would like to present to our members at a future meeting please contact Jamie Yates through the DACS web site, or in person, or let any of our board members know.