My Best Net Companions

You don't have to depend on big bad Microsoft to complete your Internet experience, whether you are in the office or at home.  Everything net-related in my office PC is either free-ware or open-sourced.  Here, I would like to share my favorite net-related softwares that I use daily.  Some of them just so-so in ease of use and user-friendliness, some are outright fabulous I wonder how the programmers can offer them for free.  Here we go...

Web Browser
There is only but one – Firefox.  This Gecko-based open source web browser is the de-facto web browser now among tech-savvy net users with downloads exceeding 50 million as at last August.  The reasons?, it is relatively secure compared to IE with fortnightly update to plug any compromised security features and the speed at which it render web pages is relatively faster than IE.  Of course you have to fine-tune the “about:config” file in Firefox root directory to achieve the optimum speed based on your connection speed.  To do this, just type “about:config” in the address bar and the configuration setting will be displayed.  Just google for any websites that will show you how to optimize Firefox by tinkering with the “about:config”. As opposed to IE, Firefox lets users customize browsing and security features.  As an added bonus, it is theme-able with popular themes available for download.  Another feature is the extension plug-ins such as mouse-gestures, tab-browsing, minimize-to-tray, to reel of just a few.

Another popular web browser is Opera and it is ad-based.  Unless you are comfortable with losing one inch of browser space at the top right corner, I suggest you stick with Firefox.

E-mail Client
Outlook Express is good enough for your daily e-mail composing, reading and sending.  However, if you insist only the best, there is always Thunderbird to feed your appetite for secure and customizable e-mail client.  Thunderbird “learns” to identify spams based on your actions while reading emails.  Like Firefox, Thunderbird is also theme-able and features can be customized by plug-ins extensions.

Per-to-Peer Clients
There are many P2P networks out there, namely Gnutella, Gnutella2. Edonkey and torrent.  To download a small file, gnutella is recommended and you can almost find whatever you need for download in the network.  My favorite gnutella client is Limewire which is ad-based.  If you hate ads occupying your monitor screen, you can always opt for Limewire Pro which is ad-free and comes with “turbocharged” connection as opposed to “excellent” in the free ad-based Limewire.

eDonkey is good for downloading big files but due to long queue to download, I discarded it.

My personal favorite is torrent network.  For this I use Azureus as a client.  The speed of download is reasonable and you can almost find what your heart desires just by visiting web sites that specialize in tracking torrent files.  Using the torrent network is tricky and here's my my attempt to briefly describe how to go about downloading a file.  Torrent network is good for any sizes of downloads, be it 10MB or 3GB.  The only problem is that a torrent must be hosted by a host and you need a tracker to determine what size the file is, where it is hosted and how many users are sharing/downloading the file. I normally go to www.torrentspy.net to look for movies and programs.  Just type in what you are looking for and if there is such a file, it will be displayed in the search results.  Just download the torrent to your hard disk.  Next, use any torrent client such as Azureus and open the .torrent file.  Azureus will prompt you for the .torrent file and also the location to which you want the file downloaded.  Sounds confused?  Well, It happened to me also at first few tries, but after a few trials and errors, downloading movies/programs/jpgs using Azureus is now a breeze.

Azureus is the best for .torrent network because it supports trackerless download and is very reliable.  The only set-back is, it is java-based and needs JRE installed to function.  Did I mention memory usage?   Yup, Azureus consumes a lot of memory.  Downloading five .torrents files with a ombined sizes of 3GB simutaneously using Azureus will deprive you of at least 50MB of valuable memory.

If you are all-in-one kinda person.  There is Shareaza for you.  It can handle all P2P networks (Gnutella, eDonkey, and torrent)  Just give it a try.  You may like it.  And the good thing is it is free.

My office internet connection is behind a Cisco router and certain ports are not reachable to the outside connection by default.  All P2P cleints require that certain ports in your PC are open in order to function properly.  Azureus for example needs port 6881 (which is default) to operate efficiently.  If your office PC has an IP that looks like 192.168.xxx.xxx, chances are you are behind a router and the “outside” world cannot reach you directly.  The router functions as a gateway to the outside connection and you have to “forward” your  port (eg. 6881) to the router so that incoming connection to your internal IP through the router is allowed.  Port-forwarding is very tricky and you have to be a network administrator to port-forward.  Unless I find a way to hack into the router and port-forward my port 6881, I have to make do with slow downloads (average 10KB/s during office hours, 30KB/s after office hours).  If you use PC at home, port restriction shouldn't be a poblem.

Be forewarned that sharing files using P2P is highly controversial and some unlucky chaps have been brought to court for illegal file-sharing.  Luckily in Malaysia the authority is silent on the matter.  I hate to think that someday some guys in uniform come knocking on my office door and seize away my PC and me (touch wood) :(

Firewall
For personal firewall, I prefer Zone Alarm personal edition which is free, user-friendly, stable and feature-rich.

Well, that's all I can think of at the moment.  Anything, just buzz me by email or drop your comment here.