A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
In this months Lagniappe, I reviewed a NirSoft Utility that I’ve used for many years. When I write my review columns, I usually check my indexes to see if I had previously written about the software. This month, I noticed that there are many programs that I no longer use. I thought I’d list a few of them and explain why I no longer use them. The links will open my original review.
• CCleaner – is a program that I used for many years. It was originally known as Crap Cleaner and was a very good utility. Over the years, many new functions were added which I hardly ever used. In 2017, it was sold to Avast. It wasn’t too long before it was discovered that the program included a Trojan malware installer. I haven’t used it since then. I also don’t use Avast Antivirus anymore.
• Kaspersky TDSS Killer – is another one purpose utility that I used to run weekly. It simply scans your computer for root kits. When I bought new computers, I didn’t reinstall it.
• TunnelBear VPN – is an still an excellent VPN (I think). I quite using it when it was purchased by McAfee, a company that I don’t much care for.
• Spyware Blaster – is another utility that didn’t make it onto my Windows 10 machines. It searches for and removes spyware, adware, browser hijackers, etc. Now that I’m researching this article, I’ll probably install it again.
• WPS Office – formerly known as Kingsoft Office is an office suite of programs. I use to solely use this program because it synced easier with my Android devices. I haven’t used it for about two years.
These are just a few of the programs that I no longer use. There are many others that I discontinued because I either had no use for them or they were no longer being updated. Back in 2014, I even wrote an article about some old friends that I miss.
It’s not that I’m fussy and need the latest and greatest. My default image viewer is VuePrint which was last updated in 2008. It is still a great program for viewing, printing and converting graphics files. I still do a lot of my web page editing with Kompozer, another program which will probably never be updated.
Thanks for reading.