Here Are the 10 Winners of Last Week’s WinX DVD Ripper CompetitionCongratulations to: What I found even tougher than judging the competition’s winners, was writing ‘sorry’ letters to the 23 people who did not qualify for a free WinX Ripper. Actually, the rebel lurking inside of me wanted to send free licences to 3 people from non-American / non-European countries; although they had poor English and fairly average suggestions, I sensed they would have enjoyed the freebie more than most. In the end, I abided by the spirit of the competition, and I awarded licence keys to the recommendations that will benefit you the readers the most. This week I feature 3 of those readers’ recommendations, the other 7 will feature in future ezines. FileZilla – Shane’s RecommendationSooner or later most people need an FTP program like FileZilla. Even though my web publishing program has a built-in FTP client, I still like an alternative dedicated FTP utility for troubleshooting. It’s hard to fault FileZilla, it’s a mature, open-source program which has won several awards itself. Furthermore, reviewing this program myself I discovered a new litmus test for a good program – it should have its own forum. FileZilla also has high rating in all WOT (Web of Trust) categories. Ninotech Path Copy 4.0 – Klaus’s RecommendationA number of people recommended one product from a software site that has an Aladdin’s cave of products. Ninotech Path Copy is a shell extension that enables you to copy the path of a file or directory to the Clipboard. Even if you don’t need such a program right now, it’s worth looking around the Softpedia site to find another gem that you could use right away. DropBox – Sean’s RecommendationThe reason that I chose Sean’s suggestion is that it reminds me that I am bad at backup. Therefore I like the idea of having secure ‘locker’ for my important documents. Another benefit of DropBox is that you can access your backup from other computers. The payment options for all these utilities vary, but DropBox allowed me to subscribe to a free version giving 2GB worth of storage. Funny how the mind plays tricks; thinking about backup triggered my memory of the following horror story. Lightning StrikesThis particular online-order company had a wonderful disaster recovery plan. Moreover they tested it every 6 months and it always restored perfectly. The details included a hot standby server, and their backup tapes were stored offsite in the deputy managers safe. Then one night came a thunderbolt. Lightning literally struck their building and everything including the computer room was destroyed in the ensuing fire. After the initial shock subsided, everyone took up their disaster recovery roles, just as they had practiced. Insurance took care of the recovery costs, and in no time at all, the new servers arrived along with a mobile building and generator. The deputy manager despatched a courier to collect the backup tapes that his wife got out of the safe. Precisely what happened on that icy road will probably never be known, but the result was the poor courier slid under a lorry. Fortunately, the courier was not seriously hurt. Not so the tapes, they were flattened under the lorry’s wheels. The master recovery plan even had a section, which covered failure of the first backup tape, but it had never been tested. Of course, they had other tapes but they were over two days old, and for a variety of reasons, they could not recover the intervening transactions using backup. Eventually they had a team in India key in all the orders manually. Guy’s Own Recommendations: SolarWinds Engineer’s Toolset v10 |
