Newsletter Archives

• NotifyIcons — Put that System tray to work!

  Posted on April 7, 2025 at 02:43 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  The Windows System tray (or status notification area) tells us when our Internet is down, when our printer is out of ink, and provides countless other alerts.

  Windows and other programs install NotifyIcons to our System trays to accomplish this.

  During our morning coffee sipping/software hunt the other day, we came across two pretty neat utilities, Icon Meter and Temperature Icon Meter.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.14.0, 2025-04-07).

  Freeware Spotlight Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Icon Meter, Newsletters, PixiEditor, Temperature Icon Meter

• Classic and Extended Control Panel — no need to say goodbye

  Posted on March 24, 2025 at 02:45 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 22.12 • 2025-03-24

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  Microsoft is migrating applets out of the Windows 11 Control Panel and into the fancy Settings app in Windows 11, but not all of us are ready to give it up just yet.

  Whether Control Panel is retired quickly or slowly, its days are numbered.

  Peter Panisz created a program for Windows 10 and Windows 11 called Classic and Extended Control Panel, and it is just great. It retains the simple layout and feel of Windows Control Panel, launches the traditions applets, and does so much more.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.12.0, 2025-03-24).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Freeware Spotlight Classic and Extended Control Panel, Control Panel, Newsletters, TranslucentTB

• Password Generators — Your first line of defense

  Posted on March 10, 2025 at 02:43 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  If you create a password that is easy to remember, you create a password that can be cracked.

  These are no longer the days of P@ssw0rd123, Fido2002, or 22222. No joke — an entire county government in our area used that last one on both of their servers until we helped them out.

  You may think your password is fine because your account gets locked if a wrong password is tried too many times. Well, that used to be the case. If a hacker used a rainbow table that tried 2 million passwords and could try only one possible password every 15 minutes, that would have taken a very long time.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.10.0, 2025-03-10).

  Freeware Spotlight Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Newsletters, Password generators, Password Tech, RandomPass

• NPS Image Editor — for those who still like Microsoft Paint

  Posted on February 24, 2025 at 02:42 CST by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  I’ll admit it. I still use Microsoft Paint from time to time because I like how easily I can paste images into other images, make collages, and quickly add text to an image.

  Before you start writing that email: yes, I know there are other programs that do those things. Remember? I run that download site. But Paint is fast. You can right-click an image icon and choose Edit, and Paint has your image ready for you. Do I wish it had more bells and whistles? I certainly do.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.08.0, 2025-02-24).

  Freeware Spotlight Color picker, Image Editor, NeoHtop, Newsletters, NPS Image Editor, System Monitor

• Back to BASICs — Hello, World!

  Posted on February 10, 2025 at 02:43 CST by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  My mom ran the media center at my school when I was a teen, and she happened to have control of a coveted personal computer.

  Sometimes, that TI-99 made it to our home on the weekends. As I think back to messing around with TI BASIC, I realize that — to some of you — BASIC seems pretty amateur. Well, not all of us are old enough to have had snowball fights in the woods of Wisconsin with Seymour Cray.

  Anyway, I found eight pretty nifty BASIC (Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) programs for you to geek out on. All of them will run on your Windows machine, so have fun!

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.06.0, 2025-02-10).

  Freeware Spotlight bas55, Basic, BASIC-256, Craft Basic, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Decimal BASIC, FreeBASIC, GCBASIC, Great Cow BASIC, Microsoft Small Basic, Newsletters, QB64

• TextWorx — Writing or coding will never be the same

  Posted on January 27, 2025 at 02:42 CST by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  I am lightning.

  No, not fast — but I like to take the path of least resistance. If there is an easier way to do something, that’s the way for me! I do a lot of writing. Randy, the other Older Geek, does his fair share of coding. So when he told me he’d been using a program he had tested a while back that made both of these easier, I perked up.

  TextWorx is a free program by fellow Missourian BGMCoder. TextWorx works with pretty much any program and makes writing or coding so much easier. I’ve been using it for only a week, and I can’t imagine writing without it. I’m using it right now.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.04.0, 2025-01-27).

  Freeware Spotlight Newsletters, Patch Lady Posts, TextWorx

• Treasure Hunt — 10 hidden gems on OlderGeeks.com

  Posted on January 13, 2025 at 02:45 CST by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 22.02 • 2025-01-13

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  This week we’re looking at ten very useful and free programs that just kind of got buried in the thousands of other programs on our website.

  This is not a “Top Ten” list — the selections are not ranked. But most have their place and serve a purpose, so I hope you’ll find something useful here.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.02.0, 2025-01-13).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Freeware Spotlight ChrisPC DNS Switch, Cstitch, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, GrandOrgue, Hosts File Editor, Lum Screen Recorder, MiTeC DirList, Newsletters, Piggy Banks, SyncDroid, WaGi’s IP-Blacklister, Writemonkey

• FotoSketcher — Look, kids! Mom’s an artist!

  Posted on December 23, 2024 at 02:43 CST by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  I’m not. So finding a free tool that makes me appear to be an artist was very exciting. And a portable free tool — even better!

  FotoSketcher by French developer David Thoiron (all things artsy come from France) lets you load a photo so it can make art from it. Let me show you. Grab a copy of FotoSketcher from OlderGeeks.com, and we’ll play around with it.

  The file you are downloading is a simple EXE file that you just click on to run. There is nothing to install. It runs on any 64-bit (most common) version of Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10. or 11.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.52.0, 2024-12-23).

  Freeware Spotlight Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, FotoSketcher, Image Editor, Image Generation, Image manipulation, Newsletters
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