I ran into the situation recently where I had to run a wi-fi scan due to the fact some other routers near me were using a channel that was getting too choked up with traffic. On attempt to use NetStumbler with my Dell mini 10v, the software simply wouldn’t detect my wi-fi card at all.

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.

Copy-pasting is probably one of the most common things any computer user does. For Windows users, whenever you copy something it stays in the clipboard for you to paste to other locations. The problem with this is when you copy something else, the clipboard gets erased to make room for the new item you copied. To overcome this limitation, take a look at the freeware utility, ArsClip.

ArsClip is a FREE (freeware) utility for the windows clipboard. ArsClip monitors the clipboard and keeps track of the entries. Press a configurable hotkey and select an item (or items) to quickly paste into a program. [...] ArsClip remembers the last 15 (default) or more text entries entered into the Window’s clipboard and can be configured to monitor non-text items.

You can read the documentation here, but there are some very useful features available with this utility:

• Queue style remembered items so your copied items remain in the order they were added.
• Permanent items for stuff you paste a lot.
• No installation required.

ArsClip seems like it will handle most anything, but does anyone have another clipboard replacement utility they prefer?

In 2005 I started using GPS and my first GPS device was a Garmin StreetPilot i3 (I still have it and it still works!) After that I upgraded to the StreetPilot c340, then the StreetPilot c580 and then my current nüvi 270.

On a quick check of the Garmin automotive section of their site (I go by there every so often to see the newest offerings) there is not but a single StreetPilot series model left, that being the big-screen 7200 model. Other than that, all the rest of the models are nüvis.

The StreetPilot series is now one model away from the chopping block.

A few things to note about older "c" series StreetPilots (the most popular of the line):

Yes it can be upgraded to newer map sets, but there will inevitably come a point where you won’t be able to. The reason is because the map database will inevitably exceed the storage space inside a "c" series. (And it’s unknown whether or not you can use an SD card in the slot for future map database releases.)

The bright side is that current-gen nüvi 2xx and 2×5 models are pretty cheap these days. The nüvi 200 and 250 can be had for under 150 bucks easily. And with the nüMaps guarantee you can upgrade the map database free of charge.

Let’s say you’re a current "c" series owner and don’t feel like flipping out the cash for a nüvi or map upgrade. Is it still usable? Yes. And it will continue to be usable until a hardware failure (usually the touchscreen goes first) occurs. True, the maps will be a bit outdated but it will still get you where you need to go as it always has.

But let’s say you do think it’s time to switch over to a nuvi. Are there any utilities to copy your favorites from the "c"? YES. You can get the freely available Nüvi Editor. It connects up to StreetPilots via USB with no problems, downloads all your favorites, and then you can plug in a nüvi with USB and upload them all to the new unit, so you don’t lose a thing.

Either way you can still use GPS as you always have, but if you decided to upgrade to a nüvi, at least you now know you won’t have to re-save all your favorites all over again.

Over the weekend I was at the Wal-Mart picking up a few things and noticed over in the electronics dept. they had 2GB Sandisk USB sticks on sale. $12.88 a piece. Cheap enough as far as I’m concerned so I bought one.

I had 2 purposes for buying the stick.

1. It’s better than the 512MB I have (one can never have too much space).
2. I wanted to try out a "full" Linux distribution booted off USB installed via UNetbootin.

Last week I tried this out with smaller distros, but now that I had a full 2GB at my disposal I could try the CD-sized distributions. So of course I installed Linux Mint "live" mode on the stick and gave it a go.

Here’s what I have to report:

Now that I’ve experienced what it’s like to run a CD-sized distro off a USB stick, I can honestly say that this beats the ever-lovin’ crap out of using an optical disc. It is faster and smoother all around in operation, and quiet. No annoying spin-up/spin-down noises whatsoever.

If given the option I will always use this method of booting a live Linux distro over using the disc. No question. I highly recommend that if your computer has the ability to boot off USB, are curious about Linux and hate running anything off the optical drive, use this method.

Side note about UNetbootin: If you’re asking "can I make my USB an emergency bootable repair tool?" Absolutely. It supports NTPasswd, FreeDOS, Smart Boot Manager and several others. Like I said, if you can boot off USB, use the stick instead. See the UNetbootin web site for details on that.

7-Zip is a file archiving application. Remember WinZIP or PKZIP? Think of 7-Zip like that.

This app is not pretty but it sure is easy. In fact, it’s so easy that it sometimes confuses people. When you install it, all you have to do to create a ZIP or 7z file is just right-click a file, a selection of files or a folder, choose 7-Zip from the context menu and create your ZIP file. That’s all there is to it.

7-Zip will easily open files created by other archive programs such as WinZIP. It will also recognize archive types from Linux such as TAR and GZIP (very handy).

The only archive type others use that 7-Zip does not support (to the best of my knowledge) is RAR. WinRAR is available for that (but it’s not free).

JKDefrag is a file defragmentation utility for Windows. It is free and very ugly-looking but does the job very, very well. When you download this application it doesn’t get any easier as far as ease-of-use is concerned. There is nothing to install. Just double-click the JKDefrag.exe executable file and it starts doing its thing. This will surprise some people because most don’t expect an app to just work like this without some sort of installation first – but JKDefrag does what it’s supposed to do. You double-click and just wait until it’s finished. That’s it. Nothing else to do. It’s that easy.

See video below for an example of what to expect.