When it comes to email, there are many who prefer the convenience of web-based mail but wish there was a local application that looked and acted like a mail client. Zimbra Desktop is it. This software absolutely nails it in terms of friendliness, ease-of-use, convenience and everything in between.

First of all, it’s multi-platform. Windows, Mac or Linux. Any truly good application these days supports all three, and this does.

Second, it has support for multiple types of email:

Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Mail, two types of IMAP and POP.

It always pleases me when I see an offering by a major player like Yahoo! that is willing to support a competitor’s product like Hotmail or Gmail because it shows confidence in their own offering.

It should be noted however that only some Hotmail accounts are supported due to compatibility issues. Most will be, but if yours doesn’t connect, the software will explain why.

Third, look at this interface:

Slim, clean and super-easy. Look at the tabs on top. Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Documents and so on are all just a single click away. Folder support is easy too.

Oh, and speaking of which, did you ever want your Gmail account to have accessible "normal" folders like all other webmail does? It will when you use Zimbra. Simply add a folder via a connected Gmail account, and it will create nested folders that look and act just like normal ones – and yes they’re completely accessible via the regular Gmail interface as well.

Fourth, although this sounds a bit dopey I really dig it – a mail indicator icon in the taskbar in Windows when new mail arrives:

The yellow envelope is the new mail indicator. This seemingly insignificant feature is just so nice to have.

Fifth, yes it has multiple account support. In the screen shot above, look on the left sidebar. Your other accounts are listed at the bottom and can be accessed easily with a single click. If there is any new mail in accounts lists there, there is a small number in parentheses telling you how much new mail there is.

Sixth is the synchronization features. Using Yahoo Calendar and Contacts? It will sync seamlessly. Using Gmail’s version? It’ll sync that too.

It goes without saying that Yahoo! Mail users will appreciate Zimbra the most because it FINALLY brings a true native client to the desktop. This is Yahoo’s equivalent of Windows Live Mail and it does a fine job even though it’s beta software.

And yes, it’s beta. That means some things may go buggy from time to time. But in my use of it I’ve encountered no issues as of yet.

The way Zimbra works in Windows is by installing itself as a service. You will see a small red icon in your taskbar (when no new mail is present) like this:

This is not a bad thing whatsoever, because when the Zimbra client is minimized, it goes completely out of the way and shrinks to this little icon, which can be clicked to bring the client back up. In addition, it can be right-clicked to completely shut down the service.

Zimbra Desktop was definitely done right the first time. It is the only software I’ve seen that offers a true alternative to Windows Live Mail (especially if you don’t use Hotmail) and the feature set is just plain great.

Oh, one last note. This may be a frilly feature but still worth mentioning. It has 12 different themes you can use:

This is available via the Options tab.

Let’s say for example you want Zimbra to look like Gmail. You would choose "Zmail." This is what it looks like:

Looks pretty close to Gmail, doesn’t it?

Zimbra’s dev team really thought this product through.

As said at the top of this article, this is a product that accesses web-based mail but still retains the total look and feel of a local mail client – and has the very-super-awesome-cool sync features like Windows Live Mail does, so it isn’t an island unto itself whatsoever.

Two huge thumbs up for Zimbra Desktop. You’d be very hard pressed not to like this.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Zimbra Desktop Is Just Plain Awesome

CSVed is a free (see below) utility which does a lot more than a text editor or Excel (without some macro/formula magic that is) does, including:

• change separator
• save filtered items
• remove duplicates
• add prefix and suffix

CSVed is designed for working with delimited files only, so it should do just about anything you would need. This tool is postcardware, so if you use it and like it, let the author know.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Powerful Tool For Working With Delimited Text

Moving an application to the trash is simple and easy. Shouldn’t true uninstallation on the Mac be the same way?

With AppTrap, when you move an application to the trash, you’re automatically asked if you want to move the associated preference files as well. Now that’s uninstallation, the Mac way.

From the description, this seems like a pretty useful program as I imagine having to separately remove preference files would be rather annoying (if that type of thing bothers you). The program automatically detects any associated system files left over after you remove a program and lets you decide what to do. Simple enough.

AppTrap is free/open source and it may be a nice utility to have.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Fully Uninstall Mac Programs Easily

This post covers just about every type of security category you can imagine and lists several free (for the most part) programs you can choose from. There are also several suggestion made by other users as you scroll through the thread.

This is definitely a great way to get caught up on what is out there or find something new you might can use.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Huge List Of Free Security Programs

My thought is typically to go with the lesser freebie. For the most part, commercial packages do offer more, but I typically don’t really need it. For example, I swapped from Quicken to GNU Cash about 2 years ago and I haven’t looked back. Quicken has a fancy interface and a bunch of wizards, but I found I just preferred a simple register view which GNU Cash does very well.

Additionally, for tool/utility programs, freebies almost always do what I need. Notepad++, Keepass, CutePDF, Sysinternals, Winpatrol, etc. are pretty top-notch in my opinion so I can’t see any compelling reason to pay for something which does basically the same thing. I don’t use tech support (I prefer to Google it), so that isn’t even a consideration.

Now there are a couple of exceptions that I will always go with when it comes for business use:

• Windows over Linux
• MS Office over OpenOffice/fill in another free office suite

So what do you think? Do you lean more towards the commercial offering or the freebie?

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Do You Pay Fully Featured Programs Or Go With A Lesser Freebie?

Linker [...] creates hyperlinks to items and folders in Outlook, and to files and folders in Windows Explorer. It is a system tray applet places the hyperlink in the Windows clipboard. The hyperlink can then be pasted into any Microsoft Office document, web page, e-mail message, or any document that supports hyperlinks. While this is an important feature for the efficient and productive use of shared items in an Exchange public folder system,  there was no  convenient way to create these hyperlinks – until now.

While this utility certainly isn’t for everyone, for those of you with a use for it, this tool can really save you some time.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Easily Add Hyperlinks In Outlook And Office Documents

The new 9.0 edition is faster, safer and easier to use. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition gives you free rock solid protection for your basic security needs. The combined anti-virus/anti-spyware scanner in AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition runs up to 50% faster than earlier versions and doesn’t get in your way. AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition also delivers new anti-phishing detection techniques, which can quickly and accurately determine whether or not a web page is hosting a phishing attack. Additionally, version 9.0 comes with basic anti-rootkit protection to ensure protection against sophisticated hidden threats.

AVG 9 supports Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. If you are an AVG user, go ahead and plan on upgrading.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

AVG Free Version 9 Is Now Available

There is EasyTAG, a multi-platform program that works great in Linux or Windows, but the interface is definitely better suited for Linux as it doesn’t take advantage of any Windows-specific menu features.

After some searching I came across Mp3tag – and it’s awesome because it makes adding in album art very easy.

Before continuing, some MP3 tagging programs embed the album art in the MP3 file while others do not. I wanted one that specifically did embed. The ones that don’t simply save the image files separately alongside the MP3s (like WinAMP does.) This can cause big clutter in short order, and you definitely don’t want that.

The great thing about Mp3tag is that it works in XP, Vista or 7, is very light on its feet and easy to use.

Here’s an example of how it works:

First, have your album art ready for whatever MP3 you want to embed it to, be it a GIF or JPEG file.

When you first load Mp3tag, click File then Change Directory or press CTRL+D to go to the directory to where your MP3 files are.

Highlight the MP3 you want to add art to, right-click the cover area at bottom left, then choose Add Cover, like this:

After that, navigate to where your cover art is, open it, and it will show in the area:

After that, click File then Save tag or just press CTRL+S.

This is to date the easiest way I’ve seen to manually add in cover art for MP3 files, and believe me I’ve tried a bunch of different programs for this task. Mp3tag definitely has them all beat..

..unless anyone can find one better that’s free?

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Easy MP3 Album Art Import/Export With Mp3tag

JStock is a free stock market software for 23 countries. It provides Real-Time stock info, Intraday stock price snapshot, Stock indicator editor, Stock indicator scanner, Portfolio management and Market chit chat features. Free SMS/email alert supported[.]

JStock boasts a pretty impressive feature list. I can see the alerts (email/text/tray) being especially useful. Additionally, it is built on Java, so it runs on any OS.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Open Source Tool To Track Your Stock Investments

At this point I was forced to seek out an alternative. It had to be free and had to be at least at good as NetStumbler. I found one: inSSIDer. Free? Yes. Just as good? Yes, and in fact it’s better in some instances (it will scan both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz.) Did it detect my wi-fi card? Yes, and did on first try.

For those wondering, yes it also does have GPS capability like NetStumbler does (for those that like to pinpoint exactly where the best spots for sources are.)

Those graphs you see aren’t just fluff. You get some good useful information out of this concerning signal strength. The interface is also much more agreeable to work with compared to NetStumbler.

The best feature about inSSIDer is that it’s stupidly easy to use. Just double-click and go. There’s nothing to configure other than selecting the wi-fi card you have. And being that most of us only have one of these in our laptop or desktop, you usually don’t have to bother with that setting either.

If you were looking for a really good wi-fi scanner tool, inSSIDer is definitely it. I give it two huge thumbs up.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

NetStumbler Doesn’t Work? Try inSSIDer