The Pidgin multi-platform messenger is something that has been indispensable for years. I use it, just that one messenger to chat with & be alerted about mail from several services, including Yahoo, MSN (Live/Hotmail), Google/Gmail, AOL/AIM and ICQ. You can can however use this one client to chat with lots of friends on many more clients all at once(!).
MP3, WMA and other compressed audio formats have been becoming more and more popular in the last couple of years for several reasons. These audio files can be played on mp3 players. Because of their small size, compared to their audio CD counterparts, you can get hundreds of songs on a CD, where normally 10 - 20 songs fit and so on.
How do you however get music on a normal audio CD into the mp3 format?
There are many free & not free programs for doing that. One program that can quickly do that for you is the CDex Open Source Digital Audio CD Extractor.
Do you work on different PCs, which do not necessarily have the software you need or on which you cannot always install that software?
There is an attractive solution to this. Simply get “portable” versions of that or similar software and install them on a USB (thumb) or other portable, external drive, which you can then carry along with you and use on multiple computers.
This is the portable version of the installable Taskmanagers System Explorer. When you start system explorer (the first time), it asks if it should make a security scan of running processes & compares them to an online database. The results can be viewed in a browser.
The security scan can also be started by clicking the Security Scan button.
The VLC Media Player is an all-rounder. It plays just about any video & audio format there is, streams and converts media from one format to another. It is cross-platform, meaning it is available for not only different Windows versions, but for Linux, Mac & other platforms. Best of all, it is free.
This is how the official site describes it:
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD and various streaming protocols.
Ever since I came across CDBurnerXP a few years ago, it's been the software I use for burning CDs/DVDs, even if I have always had Nero and access to other similar software. I also always recommend it to other folks.
The reason is, it's free, easy to install & takes little space.
This is what the manufacturer says:
The Pidgin multi-platform messenger is something that has been indispensable for years. I use it, just that one messenger to chat with & be alerted about mail from several services, including Yahoo, MSN (Live/Hotmail), Google/Gmail, AOL/AIM and ICQ. You can can however use this one client to chat with lots of friends on many more clients all at once(!).
