Software

Hiren's BootCD is the best bootable CD kit for just about any situation you might encounter. I've used it extensively repairing PCs for years now, and the latest versions are amazing. See here for a complete list of included tools. The download is in ISO format, so either use the included ISO burning utility or burn with your favorite app.

 

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Latest Version: 10.1

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Lately I've been strictly using the Google Chrome open source project Chromium. Besides the added privacy (various Google additions such as auto update, RLZ, etc are removed from the Chromium project), you have access to nightly updates.

 

There is a free application available to Windows users that checks for "stable" Chromium nightly builds. You can download it here. Recent Chromium builds have the newer version of Webkit compiled in, and pass the Acid3 test.

 

If you are worried about blocking advertisements, I highly recommend AdMuncher. There have been complaints that you shouldn't need to pay for software to make a browser "functional", but AdMuncher removes advertisements for ALL browsers and MANY applications, not just one browser (such as is the case with popular Firefox extension Adblock). It's worth the money, and does a better job than Adblock.

 

If would like to make Google searches in Chromium as private as possible, go to Options and Manage. Create a new provider called "Scroogle", make the keyword "g", and the search URL "https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbw.cgi?Gw=%s". Make it the default provider. Now when you wish to search Google simple enter "g <search term>" in the address bar in Chromium. Scroogle allows SSL, anonymous logs, and privatization of search terms.

 

For those of you stuck behind a proxy and unable to get the web installer working for Google Chrome, download from the link below:

 

Google Chrome Full Install (7MB)

 

This installation EXE doesn't require an internet connection to get started, perfect for users like myself who access the internet through a proxy server.

 

For privacy concerns about Google tracking what you type in the address bar (and tying it to your unique IP address) turn off the auto suggestion feature.

 

If you miss ad-blocking features, I suggest you run Privoxy (free and open source) behind Chrome. It works great, and will help save on bandwidth usages. Another option which I have been exploring is Ad Muncher.

I've been reading a lot lately on digg about the comments hanging up Firefox, even with decent hardware. This has to do with digg's new javascript and Firefox's rendering of those libraries. Typically what happens is that the browser will "hang" temporarily while expanding comment threads. Since I experienced this myself with Firefox (Internet Explorer and Opera don't have this problem), I was just planning on waiting until the 3.0 release was made available later this year.

Fast forward a bit. I've been playing with Windows XP Professional x64 and wanted to see if Mozilla had released a x64 binary for the browser. They haven't officially released one, but many individuals have compiled the source code with x64 processors being targeted. I decided against using a x64 version due to lack of 64-bit plug-ins, however I noticed the author of Vector64 had 32-bit versions of Firefox compiled. These versions are optimized to use the SSE2 instructions on your current generation AMD or Intel processor. I decided to go head and try this out. Wonder of wonders digg comments now render as smooth as butter! It has also significantly boosted rendering speeds for other javascript heavy websites. The browser also appears to be more stable with Adobe Flash videos playing within multiple tabs.

As a bonus it's nearly exactly the same as the release version of Firefox from Mozilla. All your plug-ins and extensions will work just fine.

Check it out on the Vector64 homepage!