Now for an occasional type column. Although the Crypt is an Amiga magazine, we do recognise that a lot of us use other computers as well as an Amiga.
In my case I use a P.C. . Before anyone starts to yammer about terminology here, I am aware that an Amiga is a P.C. (personal computer) as well. The well worn reply, of course, is that although it is a P.C. it is better known by the OS name of Amiga, in much the same way that Acorn users and Mac users would never dream of calling their machines P.C.s.
I, therefore, am using a P.C., which uses Uncle Bill's idea of an OS. I also realise that this might be anathema to some Amiga users, but times change. In my case, I use a P.C. quite a lot at work and it makes it a lot easier to move files between work and home. Again before anyone yammers...I know Amiga users can use some of the formats that the P.C. uses but generally it is a pain doing it that way and you tend to lose a lot of the formatting. Ok, hope this clears up a few points before I get started.
Lets imagine you are the new owner of one of those shiny x86 boxes you see advertised absolutely everywhere for not all that Much money when you consider the cost of bringing your Amiga up to a similar spec. You have just taken delivery of it, built it up according to the instructions, did all those little things they ask you to do, like make a backup disk, install the scanner, printer, etc etc.
This is usually the point where the little children start installing games on it and generally messing about with all those settings that let the machine work right in the first place. Yep! Uncle Bill may have the most used OS, but it isn't even half as friendly as the Amiga one. One wrong twitch of the mouse and it may take hours of pain to get those settings back.
Now, if you were an Amiga user you would head straight to Aminet and download something that could help you...but we're not in Kansas anymore....
Well, things might not be as bleak as they seem. Contrary to
what every Amiga user knows, there is a wide variety of
software freely available for Windoze, there is also a very
large supply of shareware available and the P.C. magazines (for
the same price of an Amiga mag ) usually include full free
programs on their cover CD or DVD. With the extent of the P.C.
market, coupled to the fact that software is upgraded
frequently, it makes sense to magazine producers to license
older software for their cover disks to enhance their sales.
When there was a viable magazine market for Amiga, they did the
same! So, we now know there's lots of software to be had for nothing
or next to nothing on P.C. and I haven't even mentioned piracy
yet. Much in the same way that Xcopy did for Amiga software
sales; CD rewriters have done the same for P.C. software. Go to
your nearest market or car boot sale to see what I mean.
Our shiny new computer is Internet enabled, e.g. it connects to
the Internet via an internal modem and we don't need to know
anything about setting up a connection because practically
every shop in the land is willing to give you a CD that will
set up an Internet provider on your machine. So, lets recap, we have loads of software, we have an Internet
connection... There has been a lot of fuss made about safety on
the Internet for children, not to mention the danger of your
shiny new computer picking up a virus. We can also add the
danger of some git that knows a whole lot more about computers
than you do, accessing your computer while online. Most ISP's
have a homepage and when you set up a connection via a CD or
whatever this usually sets your browser to this page as the
default. On this page, you usually find links to various things
that your ISP thinks you would like; need or plain just got
paid for. These things usually include some of the
aforementioned free software. The flavour of the month appears
to be, get some half decent software providing you agree to
take advertising with it. A firm called Radiate does this and
more about this Company later. Now maybe your ISP doesn't do
this, in which case you can go to the likes of CNET. Surprisingly enough their web address is
http://www.download.cnet.com this will give a search for a file
name or particular type of software where you can specify the
OS and type. Free... share... etc. Another nice place to visit
could be http://www.fileflash.com or
http://www.freewarehome.com Lots of goodies at these sites and
things you always wanted could be yours!! As for parental
guidance software, this is also freely available and your ISP
will have it or a link to it on their website. I can't comment
on it since I've never used it and my kids are fairly easy to
please on the Net.... one simply heads for Napster and the
other the telly Cartoon pages, neither of which is a great risk.
Looking on my drive at present, I have Simple, which is an mp3
encoder/player (freeware), Winamp, a player that handles most
formats available as well as handling CD's, skins, streaming
media, and loads of other things... it even plays video
formats. Again, it is freeware. I also have the likes of
ZoneAlarm, a freeware Firewall, Napster, which shouldn't need
any introduction, Free Agent which is a free version of one of
the better news/mail readers on the P.C. side, and GoZilla
which is a download manager. Well, that's just a few but it
should give you the idea. Free Agent is a mail/news reader as I
said and if you used the likes of Thor (which I did) on Amiga
you'll know that you won't be satisfied with Uncle Bills
Outlook Express. Free Agent will make you more at home and
although it isn't Thor...it is a whole lot more like it than
Outlook! GoZilla is the only way that isn't totally freeware...
it's the one that includes advertising from Radiate. Now when
you download and install it, you agree to take the advertising.
However, being the ever so slightly devious person I am, I
discovered that this requires me to authorise it to pass the
firewall...you can probably guess the rest!! Napster should need no introduction and although this is the
software that caused the furore, the Amiga versions are head
and shoulders above it in my opinion. Just shows you that not
everything in Uncle Bills garden is everything it's made out to
be. Now your shiny new computer probably came with a virus checker,
but fear not if it didn't. Download GoZilla and it will
download a virus checker called Innoculate IT, which is free
and includes updates. GoZilla also handles Zip files as well,
which is probably the most common type of archiving on Uncle
Bill's software. As I mentioned there are loads of free
software to play with out there...there being on the Net. I
could have mentioned demos as well, such as WinZip, which will
run for so long on your computer, and you'll probably find
loads more suited to your own personal needs and tastes.
However if you are going to spend time on the Net, I recommend
the virus checker and the firewall as first things to get up
and running. Amiga has been spared most of the virus attacks
(mainly because there aren't that many users left), but it's a
completely different story when it comes to P.C. The same goes
for a firewall. Just looking at the logfile alerts after being
online for an hour will give you serious doubts about what
would be happening if you didn't have it running! Why would it need to block access from some IP numbers...and
why has it been getting ping signals from a variety of sites?
Just load it and forget the worry...it also helps if and when a
virus downloads since if it tries to access the Internet it has
to ask you first if it can go online...makes you rest a lot
easier I can tell you! There are loads of new formats that Amiga still can't display
properly or at all and the Net is an ideal way to find them and
try them out. Also, having Java is a boon when it comes to
viewing all those sites that crash Ibrowse. Until we can get
all these things on Amiga, the chances are that you will be
doing them on a Gates Crate so its worthwhile learning how to
use it and make your life a lot easier. There is software that
will let you edit the registry a lot easier (don't ask, I don't
know that much about it), and software that will make you tear
your hair out when you try to install it. That's part of the fun of a computer...just trying out things.
Like FTP software. The skies the limit with freeware and
shareware and there's so much to see and do.